Macarius of Sinai

Holy Venerable Martyr Macarius of Sinai is commemorated among the venerable fathers killed at Sinai and Raithu: Isaiah, Sabbas, Moses, another Moses, Jeremiah, Paul, Adam, Sergius, Domnus, Proclus, Hypatius, Isaac, Macarius, Mark, Benjamin, Eusebius, Elijah and others. The Azbyka page says nothing particular about him.

These fathers struggled in the monasteries and caves of Mount Sinai, where God gave the ten commandments through Moses, and in the nearby desert of Raithu, on the shore of the Red Sea. They suffered at the hands of the Saracens and the Blemmyes, nomadic Arab tribes. The first killing took place around the year 312 and was described by the Egyptian monk Ammonius, an eyewitness of the killing of forty fathers of Sinai; at the same time the Arabs killed thirty-⁠nine fathers at Raithu. The second killing took place a hundred years later and was described by another eyewitness, who escaped by a miracle, the Venerable Nilus the Faster (commemorated 12 November).

The ascetics of Sinai and Raithu led an especially strict life: all week they stayed in their cells in silence, on Saturday they gathered for the all-⁠night vigil, and on Sunday they received the Holy Mysteries. They ate only dates and water. Many of them became famed for the gift of working miracles, among them the elders Moses and Joseph.

The memory of Macarius is kept on 27 January, in the new style, which is 14 January in the old style, and also in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of Sinai, on a movable day around 5 May.