Almoutran

Venerable Mary
of Egypt

April 1st

In a single, flashing moment of spiritual conversion, her entire life changed forever.

The amazing story of what happened to the Venerable Mary of Egypt – a common prostitute who eventually became one of the holiest and most dutiful saints in the history of the Christian Church – begins with a supremely dramatic incident that occurred before an icon of the Ever-Merciful and Blessed Virgin.

It happened in the Holy City of Jerusalem, around 482 A.D., according to most historians of the period.

Standing before the icon of the Blessed Theotokos on that memorable day was a 29-year-old woman from the great city of Alexandria in Egypt. The young woman had come to Jerusalem out of curiosity; she was eager to visit the Holy Sites and to experience for herself the supposed spiritual power of such renowned places as Mt. Calvary and the Garden of Gethsemane.TAKEN FROM

She was certain they would have no impact on her – because she did not believe in the Holy Gospel or the tenets of the Holy Church. Indeed, her entire purpose in making this journey was to prove to herself that the holy sites had no power to influence sinners. Intent on mocking the faith, in fact, she boasted about the fact that she had earned the price of her ship passage by seducing other religious pilgrims en route, and then charging them high prices for her sexual favors!

Before leaving Alexandria, Mary had lived a dissolute life in which she traded her body for the money that would buy her opulent jewels and expensive clothing. She enjoyed her lustful lifestyle for its own sake, however – and sometimes refused payment entirely, while reveling in the degradation brought on by her own tawdry impulses. Callous and insensitive, she spent many a night engaged in drunken orgies with men who defiled her with impunity.

After arriving in Jerusalem, Mary began visiting the holy sites. At a well-known Christian church in the center of the city, Mary had given in to a sudden impulse. All at once, and for reasons she could not have explained, she had decided that she wanted to venerate one of the city’s holiest relics: the Honorable Cross on which the Lord had breathed His last. Mary’s impulse was spontaneous and unexpected – since she had been earning her living for the past seventeen years in Alexandria as a prostitute who never wasted her time on useless prayer!

Born in Egypt in 453 A.D., according to most Church historians, Mary had run away from home by the age of twelve. She wound up living in the streets of the cosmopolitan capital, Alexandria, where she soon became a debauched pleasure-seeker.

Given this dubious background, Mary was understandably surprised when she suddenly felt a yearning to enter the church in Jerusalem and pray before the Cross of Christ, who had supposedly died for her sins. But she was a creature of impulse who often acted on her intuition . . . which was now telling her that she needed to pray in the presence of the Holy Cross.

Moving quickly, before she might have time to change her mind, the young woman stepped into the vestibule of the church and prepared to confront one of the most precious relics in all of Christendom.

But then she got a surprise. Her feet no longer seemed to work! Again and again, she tried to leave the vestibule and enter the main body of the church, only to discover that she was totally paralyzed. With growing panic, she understood that some mysterious force was blocking her path into the church. Amazed and terrified, she looked up from the floor – and directly into the loving gaze of an icon of the Blessed Virgin. In desperation, she begged for permission to enter these sacred precincts . . . while also confessing to the Virgin that she had been living a life of moral squalor and rampant sin. Praying wordlessly, she burned with a terrible grief as she promised to reform her life . . . if only she could be allowed to enter the presence of His Holy Cross!

Described with powerful eloquence by her eventual biographer, the Jerusalem Patriarch St. Sophronios, the sequence of events that followed was amazing to behold. Moments after completing her prayer to the Virgin, the young woman was thrilled to feel her invisible bonds beginning to dissolve. In a few moments, with her freedom of movement restored, she was able to enter the church and venerate the Honorable Cross to her heart’s content. At last, having finished her orisons, she returned to the vestibule to say a prayer of thanks to the Blessed Theotokos.

As she prayed, however, a truly remarkable thing happened; she heard a voice say clearly: “If you cross over Jordan you will find real peace!”

What could this extraordinary pronouncement mean? As dumbfounded as she had ever been in her life, Mary decided to obey. That same afternoon, she bought three loaves of fresh bread from a street vendor and set out for the fabled Jordan, where she soon crossed over and entered the great desert. What followed was an extraordinary odyssey that lasted 48 years, during which the Venerable Mary wandered the sandy wastes while eating such food as she could find and praying to Almighty God without letup. Year after year, she maintained this austere way of life, and soon came to love it. What need had she of luxuries or pleasures of the flesh? God was her focus now and she was supremely content to live for Him.

After many years of this passionately ascetic life, Saint Mary one day came upon a renowned desert priest-monk (the Church term is “Heiromonk”), the Elder Zosimas, who was amazed to find a white-haired old woman wandering in the wilderness. Even more remarkable was the fact that this apparition appeared to be totally naked! Zosimas tried to question her, but she fled. Huffing and puffing along as best he could, the old monk finally managed to catch up with the penitent. When at last he drew alongside her, she gasped at him from a brook in which she had taken refuge, so that her body could not be seen:

“Abba, forgive me for the sake of the Lord. I cannot face you for I am a naked woman.”

Zosimas was alarmed by this, of course, but he had enough presence of mind to toss her his outer garment, which she quickly wrapped around herself. With her modesty now fully restored, she quickly told him the story of her life, and of the astounding miracle that had inspired her to become one of the world’s very few female desert ascetics. The pious Elder listened carefully, and then thanked God for His wonders – while also agreeing to bring her Holy Communion a year later at this same location.

He kept his promise, of course . . . and then received another major shock. Arriving at their agreed-upon meeting place at night, he watched her cross the Jordan by walking across its surface in the bright moonlight, as if she didn’t have a care in the world! What could he say? Crossing himself feverishly, he again thanked his Creator. But when the saintly old man returned the following year to give her communion, he found her lying dead on the shore. Written in the sand, directly beside her head, was a beautiful request: “Abba Zosimas, bury the body of the humble Mary on this site; render dust to dust. I died on April 1, the same night of the saving-suffering of Christ, after having received Communion of the Divine Mysteries.”

She was gone. The Venerable Mary of Egypt died in the Year of Our Lord 530, at the age of 77.

If there is a more beautiful story in the annals of the Holy Church than the story of this soulful and suffering woman who was saved by the love of Almighty God from the degradation of her misguided life, it would be hard to find. In many ways, her life-story is the story of the New Testament – the passionate story of a merciful Savior who came to earth to save sinners, and of the immense love He feels for every human being. He saved Mary!

She suffered. But in the end, her life was a poem of praise to Almighty God.

Apolytikion in the Eighth Tone

In thee the image was preserved with exactness, O Mother; for taking up thy cross, thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to overlook the flesh, for it passeth away, but to attend to the soul since it is immortal. Wherefore, O righteous Mary, thy spirit rejoiceth with the Angels.

Kontakion in the Third Tone

Thou who once wast wholly filled with every wanton defilement art today shown forth to be a bride of Christ through repentance. Thou didst long to live the godly life of the Angels; with the Cross, thou didst subdue and trample down demons. Wherefore, O all-modest Mary, now in the Kingdom thou art an hon’rable bride.