St. Mary of Egypt

Mary was born in Egypt around the year three hundred and forty-four. At twelve she ran from her parents to Alexandria, where for seventeen years she lived by begging and prostitution, not so much for money as for the pleasure of sin. With a band of pilgrims sailing for Jerusalem to venerate the Cross she crossed the sea, paying her passage as she paid for everything, with her body.

On the feast of the Exaltation she tried to enter the church of the Holy Sepulchre with the crowd, and an unseen power held her back at the doors. After three failed attempts she understood. She went outside, prayed before an icon of the Theotokos, vowed to leave her life, and returned: this time the doors opened.

Hearing within her heart the voice that said, 'Cross the Jordan, and there you will find rest,' she bought three small loaves and walked into the desert, where she lived for forty-seven years alone with no one but God. Toward the end of her life the priest Zosimas, fasting in the same desert during Great Lent, found her and learned her story. She received Communion from him the following year on Holy Thursday, beside the Jordan, and was dead and buried in the sand when he came back a year later.

Her life, written by Saint Sophronius of Jerusalem, is read in full in Orthodox monasteries at Matins of the Thursday of the fifth week of Great Lent, the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete sung throughout. She is the patroness of every penitent who has thought it too late to turn.