MACARIAN HOMILIES

MACARIAN HOMILIES. A collection of sermons and discourses still in the process of discovery and editing, this corpus was early ascribed to Macarius the Great (q.v.) of Egypt, but it appears in fact to be the work of an author writing from northern Syria (qq.v.) sometime in the late 4th c. One collection of fifty of the homilies circulated for centuries in both the Latin West and Greek East, and exercised profound influence on writers in the later Byzantine era, notably Symeon the New Theologian and Gregory Palamas (qq.v.). Underlining themes that are particularly prominent in the tradition of the Syriac-speaking Church, the homilies stress the gift of theosis (qq.v.) as personal experience and light, and emphasize the heart as the place of encounter with Christ in the Holy Spirit (q.v.). The heart is compared to the mountains of revelation, Sinai and Tabor, and to the altar of the Church. The use “Homily I” makes of the vision of Ezekiel (ch. 1) has a long, subsequent history in both Byzantine worship and ascetic literature.