One day Abba Macarius the Egyptian went up from Scetis to the mountain of Nitria. As he approached the place he told his disciple to go on ahead. When the latter had gone on ahead, he met a priest of the pagans. The brother shouted after him, saying, ‘Oh, oh, devil, where are you off to?’
The priest turned back and beat him and left him half dead. Then picking up the stick, he fled. When he had gone a little further, Abba Macarius met him running and said to him, ‘Greetings! Greetings, you weary man!’
Quite astonished, the priest came up to Abba Macarius and said, ‘What good do you see in me that you greet me in this way?’
The old man said to the priest, ‘I have seen you wearing yourself out without knowing that you are wearing yourself out in vain’.
The priest said to Abba Macarius, ‘I have been touched by your greeting and I realize that you are on God’s side. But another, wicked, monk who met me insulted me and I have given him blows enough for him to die of them’.
The old man realized that the priest was referring to his disciple. Then the priest fell at the old man’s feet and said, ‘I will not let you go till you have made me a monk’.
When they came to the place where the brother was, they put him on their shoulders and carried him to the church in the mountain. When the people saw the priest with Macarius they were astonished and they made him a monk. Through him many pagans became Christians. So Abba Macarius said, ‘One evil word makes even the good evil, while one good word makes even the evil good’.
Source: Becoming Fire; ed. Tim Vivian, p. 218
