St. Mary of Egypt
The Life of St. Mary of Egypt
A retelling of selections from the Life by St. Sophronius of Jerusalem
Stopped at the door of the Sepulchre
Editor's note
St. Sophronius set down Mary's story around 638, having heard it from the monks of the Jordan, who had it from the brothers of Zosimas's monastery. What follows is a faithful retelling of the opening of the Life, the moment at the doors of the Sepulchre when Mary's old life ended and her forty-seven years in the desert began. The narrative below is editorial; the original Greek of Sophronius runs longer and is read in monastic services during Great Lent.
Sophronius tells the story as it was told to him by the priest Zosimas. Mary had crossed the sea with a band of pilgrims, paying her passage with her body all along the way, and joined the crowd in Jerusalem flooding the Church of the Resurrection on the feast of the Holy Cross. She tried to enter with the rest, and could not. Three times she pressed forward; three times an unseen force held her back at the door.
She withdrew to the courtyard and saw an icon of the Theotokos. There, suddenly, she understood that her body had become unfit to come near the Cross, and that the woman in the icon was nearer to God than any priest. She prayed there, weeping, promising to leave her old life if she might only be permitted to venerate the wood on which her Lord had been crucified.
She tried the door again, and now the crowd parted before her. She venerated the Cross, returned to the icon, and asked what she should do next. She heard within her heart the answer: cross the Jordan, and there she would find rest. The same day she bought three small loaves with the only money she had not spent on sin, and walked out into the desert. She did not return for forty-seven years.
Communion by the Jordan
Editor's note
The story moves to the desert. In Orthodox monastic practice the reading of the Life on the Thursday of the fifth week of Great Lent is paired with the chanting of the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, the longest penitential text in the tradition. The Church does not make a cult of Mary's sins; it points to the strength of the Sacraments that wrought her transfiguration over forty-seven years in a place no one saw. The retelling continues with Zosimas's two meetings with her by the river.
Zosimas had retreated into the same desert for the great fast of Lent, as the rule of his community required. Far from any path he saw at a distance a figure with sun-blackened skin and hair white as snow. He ran toward it; it ran from him; he called out asking it to wait and to receive his prayers. The figure asked him first to throw down his cloak so that she might cover her nakedness.
She told him her name and her story, and she made him promise to tell no one until she had died. The next year, she said, on Great Thursday, he was to bring the Holy Mysteries to the bank of the Jordan, and she would meet him there. The year passed. On the night of the Mystical Supper Zosimas waited by the river, and Mary appeared, walking across the water. She received Communion from him with bitter weeping, asked him to come again the following year, and disappeared into the dark.
When he returned the year after he found her dead, her body undecayed, her arms folded in prayer over her heart. Beside her was scratched in the sand the date of her repose and the request that her body be buried. The desert lion that approached helped him dig the grave.