saintly Bishop Macari of Edko, he fain would have gone
with them too. But Abba Dioscorus told him, “You go
back to our beloved country, for the Crown of martyrdom
awaits you in the very city where St. Mark shed his own
blood”. Abba Macari readily complied and returned to
Alexandria. In due time he joined the innumerable host of
triumphant Egyptians who joyfully dared to pay the toll of
blood for their Orthodox Christian Faith.
- The exile of Abba Dioscorus, did not stop many of
his friends from remaining faithful to him, and keeping in
touch with him either through correspondence or
whenever possible, through personal visits. Among those
who corresponded with him was a bishop from Iberia
(present day Spain) called Peter. In the first letter he sent
him, he gave him a full report of what happened in
Chalcedon after his departure. The answers of Dioscorus
to Peter were always full of the serene sense of
resignation of the person who felt he had done rightly and
had stood up for his faith without bowing to worldly
power. He also displayed a spirit of forgiveness for those
who had wronged him and “spitefully used him and
persecuted him”.^62
One of his visitors was a merchant from Egypt
who stopped by the island shores one day, and wept
bitterly at the sight of his exiled Patriarch. The man-of-
God comforted him by saying: “My son, as long as we
conserve intact the faith legated to us, we are safe despite
all physical woes”. The merchant offered him some
money saying: “Holy Father, accept this gift because you
are in a strange land”. Abba Dioscorus replied: “My son,
we are not in a strange land – God Who created the whole
wrold and Who has given us the courage to fight for the
true faith is able to make us feel that we are not stringers