Saint Mary of Egypt.
The life of Saint Mary of Egypt was written by Saint Sophronios, Patriarch of Jerusalem (honoured on March 11), who wrote various ascetic texts imbued with the spirit of Early Christian theology and ascetic tradition.
St Mary was born in Egypt and lived during the time of Emperor Justinian (527 – 565 AD). From the age of twelve she spent a life of promiscuity in Egypt, since from that early age she corrupted her virginity and had an unrestrained and insatiable passion for carnal intercourse. Living this life she did not collect money, but simply satisfied her passion. She herself admonished Abba Zosimas that she had an insatiable desire and an uncontrollable love to wallow in the tumult that was her life and she thought so, putting human nature to shame.
Because of the profligate life and carnal desire she had, she once followed the pilgrims who were going to Jerusalem to worship the Holy Cross. And this she did, not to worship the Holy Cross, but to have many lovers who would be ready to satisfy her passion. She also realistically describes the way she boarded the ship. And, as she herself revealed, during her journey there was no species of indolence of what was said and unsaid, of which she did not become a teacher to those suffering travellers. And she herself expressed her wonder as to how the sea suffered her debaucheries, and why the earth did not open her mouth and bring her down to hell, because she had ensnared so many souls. During this journey he did not content himself with corrupting the youths, but also corrupted many others of the townspeople and foreign visitors. And in Jerusalem, which he went to on the feast of the Holy Cross, he roamed the streets "spirits of young people".
But she felt deep repentance from a miraculous event. While entering the temple to venerate the Wood of the Holy Cross, some force prevented her from proceeding. He then stood in front of an icon of the Virgin Mary, showed great repentance and asked for the guidance and help of the Virgin Mary. With the help of the Mother of God, he entered the holy temple unhindered this time and worshiped the Holy Cross. Then, after thanking the Virgin Mary, she heard a voice urging her to go to the desert, beyond the Jordan. She immediately asked for the assistance and protection of the Virgin Mary and made her way to the desert, having previously passed through the holy monastery of the Baptist on the Jordan River and received communion of the Immaculate Mysteries. He lived in the desert for forty-seven years, without ever meeting a human being.
During the first seventeen years in the desert, she fought very hard to defeat her thoughts and desires, essentially to defeat the devil who was fighting her with past life memories.
She had many desires for food, drink and "fornication" and many thoughts that pushed her towards prostitution. However, when such thoughts came to her, she fell to the ground, showered it with tears and did not rise from the earth "until that sweet light encompassed and chased away the thought that was bothering me". He constantly prayed to the Virgin Mary, whom he had as a guarantor of the life of penance he did. Her robe was torn and destroyed and she remained naked ever since. He was burning from the heat and shivering from the frost, and "as many times they fell with a blanket, they breathed and were still and immobile".
After a hard struggle, with the Grace of God and the continuous protection of the Virgin Mary, she was freed from thoughts and desires, so the logical and passive part of her soul was transformed, as well as her body was divined.
Because of the great spiritual state that Saint Mary reached, she received from God the clairvoyant gift.
She was naked but her body exceeded the needs of nature. She said to Abba Zosima: "I am a woman, and naked, as you can see, and I had the weight of my body uncovered." The body was nourished by the Grace of God: "For I am nourished and meditate on the word of God, who is holding the universe". In her case, as in the case of other Saints, we notice that the energies of the body are suspended. This suspension of bodily energies was due to the fact that her soul received the energy of the Triune God and this divine energy was channelled into her body as well: She said, "…the Grace of the Holy Spirit is enough, to preserve the essence of the soul untainted."
At that time, Hieromonk Abba Zosimas was an ascetic in a monastery, who was graced with holiness of life. He saw divine visions, as he had been given the gift of divine Inspiration, on account of which he lived to the age of fifty-three with great practice and was famous in his region. Then, however, a thought of a kind of spiritual pride entered into him, that is, he was wondering if there was another monk who could benefit him or teach him some new kind of practice. God, to teach and correct him, revealed to him that no man can attain perfection. And then he instructed him to go to a monastery that was near the Jordan River.
Abbot Zosimas obeyed the voice of God and went to the monastery of Saint John the Baptist, which was indicated to him. There he met the abbot and the monks, and saw that they radiated the Grace and love of God, living an intense solitary life with austerity, with great exercise and unceasing prayer.
In this monastery there was a rule. According to him, on the Sunday just before the beginning of Great Lent, after the monks had partaken of the Immaculate Mysteries, they prayed and embraced each other, and then they each received some food and left for the desert beyond the Jordan, to fight in the period of Lent the struggle in asceticism. They returned to the monastery on Palm Sunday, to celebrate the Passion, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Christ. They had as a rule that no one should meet the other brother in the desert neither ask him, when they returned, about the kind of practice he was doing during that period.
Abba Zosimas also applied this rule. After receiving a little food, he left the monastery and set out into the desert, desiring to enter as deeply as he could into it, in the hope that he might meet some ascetic who would help him to attain what he desired. He went about praying and eating little. He slept wherever he was.
He had walked a march of twenty days when, at one point when he sat down to rest and chant, he saw in the distance a shadow that resembled a human body. At first he thought it was a demonic ghost, but then realized it was human. This being he saw was naked, had a black body – the result of a constant exposure to the sun's rays – and had only a few white hairs on her head, which did not reach below the neck. Abbot Zosimas saw Holy Mary while she was praying. Saint Mary of Egypt practiced continuous prayer, and Abba Zosimas actually saw her when she raised her eyes to heaven and stretched out her hands and "whispered softly blessings, but her voice was not heard." And at some point, while he was sitting in fear, "he saw her lifted approximately a meter from the earth and suspended in the air and thus she prayed."
Abba Zosimas tried to get closer to see what he was seeing, but the human being was moving away. Abba Zosimas was running, she was also running. And Abba cried with tears to her to stop, to receive her blessing. But she didn't respond. As soon as Abba came to a stream and came down, that human being, after calling him by his first name, which made a great impression on Abba, told him that she could not turn and see him face to face, for she was a woman naked and she has uncovered her body parts. She begged him, if he wished, to grant her his wish and throw her a rag from his clothes, to cover her naked body. Abba did as he was told and then she turned to him. Abba immediately knelt down to receive her blessing, but she did the same. And they both remained on their knees, "Each one blessing the other".
Because Abba was wondering if he saw an immaterial spirit in front of him, she discerning his calculations, told him that she is a sinner, who has been protected by Holy Baptism and that she is dust and ashes and not an immaterial spirit.
St Mary during this meeting, after revealing her whole life, asked Abba Zosimas to come on Holy Thursday of the following year, to a certain place on the bank of the Jordan River, near a residential area, to bring to her the Holy Communion, and received it after many years of great penance that transformed her existence. "And now I would like to confess," she told him, “…that I have an uncontrollable desire to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ”.
Abbot Zosimas returned to the monastery without telling anyone what he encountered, in accordance with the rule that existed in that holy monastery. But he kept begging God to grant him to see "the beloved face" again next year and he was even sad because the time was passing very slow, as he wanted all that time to be one day.
The following year Abbot Zosimas, due to some illness, could not leave the monastery to travel in the desert, as the other fathers did at the beginning of Lent, and so he remained in the monastery. And on Palm Sunday, when the other fathers of the Monastery had returned, he prepared to go to the place that St Mary had indicated to him, to receive her communion.
On Holy Thursday he took with him the Body and Blood of Christ in a small glass, took some figs and dates and some wet lentils and left the monastery to meet the Holy Mary. But because she was late in coming to the appointed place, Abba prayed to God with tears that he would not, because of his sins, deprive him of the opportunity to see her again.
After the fervent prayer he saw her from the other side of the Jordan river, making the sign of the Cross, stepping on the water of the river "she was walking on the waters marching towards him". Then St Mary asked him to say the Creed and "Our Father". Then she embraced Abba Zosima and received the Holy Communion and the Life-Giving Mysteries. Then she raised her hands to heaven, sighed with tears and said: "Now you dismiss your servant in peace, O Lord, according to your will, because my eyes have seen our salvation."
Then, after begging him to come the following year to the stream where he had met her the first time, she asked for his prayer. Abba touched Ossia's feet, he also asked for her prayer and let her go sorrowful. She left in the same way she came, that is, stepping on the waters of the Jordan River.
The following year, according to the Saint's request, Abba Zosima was in a hurry to reach "that paradoxical sight". After marching for many days and arriving at that place, he sought "like an experienced hunter" to see "the sweetest prey", the Saint of God. But he could not see her anywhere. Then he began to pray to God earnestly: "Show me, Despot, your treasure, the asylum, which you have hidden in this desert, show me, I pray, the angel in the body, of whom the world is not worthy." For Abba Zosimas, Holy Mary was an untouchable treasure, an angel in a body, which the world was not worthy of having. And praying with these words, he saw as I a vision the Saint lying dead, facing towards the east. He also found a little note with her own writing that said: "Bury, Abba Zosimas, in this place the remains of the humble Mary, giving the earth to the earth, praying for me to the Lord for everything, be finished, the Month Farmuth (according to the Egyptians, as it is April according to the Romans), and on this night of the Passion of our Saviour, after the Divine and Sacred Supper he partook". And it happened as he saw it, He found her dead, lying on the ground, with her arms crossed and looking towards the east. At the same time, he also found a letter that begged him to bury her.
St Mary slept on the same day that she received Holy Communion. May we all have her Blessings. Amen.
