Saint Maron

Saint Maron was a hermit who, at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries, lived in the open air on a hilltop in northern Syria. The Maronite Church traces its origin to the monastery that bore his name. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on February 9, and the Maronites keep his feast on the same day.

Almost everything we know about him was recorded by Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, in his history of the monks of Syria. Theodoret, it seems, never met him in person, but he knew his disciples. He gave him a short chapter, in which he states neither his origins, nor the year of his birth, nor the name of the place where he lived. All we know is that it was in the region of Cyrrhus.

Maron chose life in the open air. He settled on the top of a hill where pagans had once worshipped their gods, and he consecrated the place to God. There he pitched a small tent of skins, which sheltered him from rain and snow, but he seldom used it.

Theodoret writes that God gave him the gift of healing, and that word of him drew people from every side. By prayer he cured fever and other illnesses, yet he cared for souls as well: he freed one man from greed and another from anger, and he taught self-control and justice. According to Theodoret, it was he who planted for God the garden that came to flower in the region of Cyrrhus. His way of life was taken up by disciples, among them James, later a renowned hermit, and it was imitated also by the ascetic Domnina.

A letter of Saint John Chrysostom survives, written from exile around the year 405 to “Maron, priest and monk.” In it the bishop assures him that he remembers him, asks for news of his health and, above all, for his prayers. Tradition sees in this Maron our hermit, though this is not certain.

Maron died after a short illness. We do not know the year of his death; the Maronite Church holds it to be 410. The hermit himself wished to rest in the grave of the elder Zebinas, whom he called father and teacher. It turned out otherwise: a dispute over his body broke out between neighboring villages, and the people of one of them carried it off, built a great shrine over it and honored him with a public festival.

The Roman Martyrology commemorates Maron on a mountain near Apamea in Syria and states that a famous monastery rose beside his tomb, from which the people later called by his name took their origin. The monastery of Saint Maron in the region of Apamea appears in the sources in 517, in a letter from monks faithful to the Council of Chalcedon to Pope Hormisdas. Historians do not agree on how this monastery is connected with the hermit from the region of Cyrrhus. From the community gathered around it grew the Maronite Church, which has its own patriarch, remains in full communion with Rome and has its center in Lebanon. Among those it has given the Church is Saint Charbel Makhlouf. Maron has been venerated as a saint since antiquity. In February 2011 Pope Benedict XVI blessed a statue of him placed in a niche of Saint Peter’s Basilica.