Macarius, another of the Africans of early Christianity who withdrew from the world to live out his faith in the desert, found himself consulted by many from the surrounding countryside. Butler writes that one such young man asked Macarius for spiritual advice. Macarius told the young man to go to a nearby graveyeard and upbraid and berate the dead who were there. The next day, he told the young man to go back to the graveyard and praise and flatter the dead. When the youth returned after the second day, Macarius asked him how the dead responded to him. The young man truthfully said, “They didn’t say anything.” Macarius then told the man to learn from the dead: in the face of both injury and flattery, hold your tongue!

Another time, Macarius used the dead to refute an effective proselytizer from the Hieracite heretical sect. This group disbelieved in resurrection and a tangible paradise, taught that only the celibate could enter the kingdom of heaven. Macarius resurrected a dead man, got him to speak, then bade the recently un-dead to return to his rest. (This may be part of the reason we’ve rarely if ever heard of the Hieracites!)

What would it mean to be equally home among the living and the dead?