ST. MACEDONIUS, ANCHORET IN SYRIA

HE lived forty years on barley moistened in water, till finding his health impaired, he ate bread, reflecting that it was not lawful for him to shorten his life to shun labors and conflicts, as he told the mother of Theodoret persuading her, when in a bad state of health, to use a proper food, which he said was physic to her. Theodoret relates many miraculous cures of sick persons, and of his own mother among them, by water on which he had made the sign of the cross, and that his own birth was the effect of his prayers, after his mother had lived childless in marriage thirteen years.* The saint died, ninety years old, and is named in the Greek menologies See Theodoret, Hist. Eccles.1. 5, c. 19, and Philotheæ, c. 13. St. Chrysost hom. 17, ad Pop. Antioch.