On the Fifth Sunday of Lent, April 21, 2024, the Orthodox Church commemorates the Holy Mary of Egypt for the 2nd time in the year. For this year, today’s, second celebration in Lent, coincided with the first in the month of April and in fact with only twenty days difference.
Hosia Mary of Egypt is depicted by the iconography as an old woman with a black sunburned body and face, white, uncombed hair and a naked or cloaked, bony body from ascetic life.
One kilometer east of the Holy Monastery of Saint Gerasimos of Jordan, in Palestine, the cave in which she lived as an ascetic for 47 whole years is preserved and many pilgrims visit her hermitage despite the fact that they have to walk through the desert to get there.
Her younger years
However, Mary the Egyptian was not born in the desert but in Egypt, in the 6th century and while Justinian was emperor of Byzantium. From a very young age, at just 12 years of age, she left her home and her parents and left for Alexandria where she followed a secluded life that for 17 years was characterized by the abundance and change of lovers motivated more by pleasure than money .
“I’ve been in politics for seventeen years”
At the age of 29, she was moved by the visit of many people to the Holy Sepulcher on September 14, the day of the raising of the Holy Cross, and she decided to visit it as well. Money for the trip was not a problem for her. After the pleasure and the opportunity.
In the Holy Sepulcher
Arriving at the Holy Sepulcher and while a crowd of people gathered for the raising of the Holy Cross, Mary the Egyptian did not manage to enter the Church of the Resurrection. Something inside her prevented her from crossing his threshold.
Icon of Saint Mary of Egypt, with scenes from her life (17th century, Moscow)
Then, as Saint Sophronios, Patriarch of Jerusalem describes in her life, everything turned upside down in her and she felt the need to distance herself from the life she had been living until then. In her decision, she asked for the help of the Virgin Mary, from whom she asked to help her enter the Temple and prop up the holy Wood and that she would move away from what had characterized her life until then.
The conversion
Indeed, Mary of Egypt managed to enter the Church of the Resurrection and worship the Holy Cross. After that he never returned to Alexandria. He crossed the Jordan and entered the desert where he spent the next 47 years a very hard life, all alone, without sufficient food and livable conditions.
In some of her illustrations she also has three loaves of bread with her – the only food she took on the way to the desert.
Her fasting, prayer and spiritual exercise were such that, according to Saint Sophronius, she acquired powers that do not correspond to a human being: she walked in the waters of the Jordan without sinking, when she prayed she stood in mid-air and had clairvoyant abilities.
Abba Zosimas
Photo of Saint Mary of Egypt boned by fasting in the Jordanian desert asking Abba Zosimas for a cloak to cover her naked body (source: “tameteora.gr”)
This is described by Abbot Zosimas who met her three times in the desert, three consecutive years, near the end of Great Lent and just before the coming of Easter. That is, a period of time that corresponds to the one that the church celebrates and reads the text that refers to the recluse at the beginning and the ascetic afterwards and her sanctified life.
The symbolism of the end of her ascetic life
The meeting of Abba Zosimas and Mary of Egypt shortly before the days of Easter has great symbolism and theological weight as it refers to repentancethe confessionthe Holy Communion and finally the death and burial. This series of incidents in the life of Mary of Egypt demonstrates that repentance and forgiveness cannot be completed without the sacrament of confession, of Holy Communion.
The meetings of Abba Zosimas and Mary of Egypt, which are three in number, also serve this essentially and symbolically:
-During their first meeting, Maria the Egyptian recounts her entire life up to that point, that is, she confesses to him. He then asks him to return in a year from that day of confession and bring Holy Communion with him to receive it.
Saint Mary the Egyptian while crossing the Jordan River stepping on its waters to find herself on the bank where Abbot Zosimas is standing who came from the Monastery to commune with her
-During their second meeting, Avas Zosimas brings the Holy Grail with him and shares it with the Holy Communion. Then Mary of Egypt asks him to come back next year and meet her again in the same place.
-At his third meeting Mary of Egypt lies dead. With a note written in the Sand she informs him that she died after receiving Holy Communion and asks him to bury her lifeless body.
The burial of Saint Mary of Egypt with the help of the lion
Abbot Zosimas is very old and does not have the strength to bury the lifeless body. Next to him stands a lion which is present in all the icons that, apart from Saint Mary of Egypt, illustrate her ascetic life in peripheral frames.
According to what is mentioned in her life, this lion stood next to Abba Zosima and the lifeless body of Saint Mary of Egypt and with its claws dug the soil so that her burial could take place. And here it is appreciated that there is symbolism regarding repentance that can tame even wild beasts.
Because it is celebrated twice a year
Her memory is celebrated by the Orthodox Church twice a year: as a fixed feast on April 1st and as a movable one, on the 5th Sunday of Lent.
And this is because the first feast of Saint Mary of Egypt is fixed and concerns her memory. Her second feast day, today, is movable and is defined in relation to Easter.
It corresponds to the Fifth Sunday of fasting and penance – a central theological concept just one week before the entry into Holy Week and the final stretch for the Resurrection and Easter.
The Life of Saint Mary written by Saint Sophronius is read during the Orthros of the Great Canon, i.e. the Thursday preceding the Friday of the Immaculate Hymn and the Fifth Sunday of Fasting.
Illustration of Saint Mary of Egypt with scenes of her ascetic life
In the Roman Catholic Church
The Roman Catholic Church commemorates the Saint only on April 1st. In Italy, St. Mary of Egypt is considered in popular belief as the patroness of “wives with peptic ulcers”, as is Mary Magdalene.
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