By Archimandrite George Kapsanis
(Delivered in 1999)
(Delivered in 1999)
Today, the Fifth Sunday of the Holy Fast, our holy Church puts forward the figure of Saint Mary of Egypt. Her life is moving. Seventeen years in sin. She lured many people into sin. When she heard that people were going on a pilgrimage, she also wanted to go to Jerusalem to see what was going on. Mostly out of curiosity. But beneath the curiosity lay some spark of God's Grace.
And as you know, for her fare, because she had no money for the ship from Alexandria to Palestine, she gave her body to sin with the sailors. And when she arrived in the Holy Land of Jerusalem and saw all the people going to the Church of the Resurrection to venerate the Honorable Cross, this unfortunate woman also went to enter, but an invisible force pushed her away, and did not let her go in. She was hindered by her sins.
She tried and tried, but she couldn't enter. She then understood and sought mediation from the Panagia and begged her to plead with the Lord for her sins and promised in return her repentance and change of life. And then she was able to enter. She then venerated the Honorable Cross.
She took a loaf of bread with her and left for the Jordan desert, where the Honorable Forerunner used to baptize those who approached him. And there, in the desert, she lived in penance for forty-seven years together with the beasts. She saw no man in those forty-seven years, and lived on that bread she had purchased. How long did that bread last? She ate from it over a long period and then managed with whatever the desert had. Some grass and whatever else was there.
And there she had a great struggle. Seventeen years in sin, another seventeen years she went through a difficult struggle to free herself from the thoughts of sin, with awesome fasting, with tears of repentance, with prayer. Yes, the sinning stopped, but the thoughts did not stop. Temptation brought them continually into her mind, to make her sin with the mind, or to return again to the world.
The struggle was great, but Saint Mary endured this struggle seventeen years! And after she was cleansed of the thoughts of her passions and sins, and her soul became angelic, she lived another thirty years in the desert, thus a total of forty-seven years.
Then - a year before she reposed - she was found by Saint Zosimas, a hieromonk who every Great Lent went and lived in asceticism in the Jordan desert, as the Fathers used to do. The Fathers left the monasteries on Forgiveness Sunday and went to hermitages, to deserted places and there they prayed and lived in asceticism until Palm Sunday.
On Palm Sunday they returned to their monasteries and chanted "Today the Grace of the Holy Spirit has brought us together...". We will chant it in a few days. On Palm Sunday you will hear it. As the ascetics came from the desert, they chanted: "Today the Grace of the Holy Spirit has brought us together...", and then they began to celebrate the immaculate Passion of our Lord and the Holy Resurrection.
So Saint Zosimas found her with a skeletal appearance. She no longer appeared human but like a skeleton. But what am I saying a skeleton? She was a heavenly woman and earthly angel! He threw his cassock at her, because she had neither clothes nor anything, and she put the Saint's cassock on. "Don't be scared," she told him, "I'm not a ghost, I'm human. Throw me your cassock." She put on the cassock of Saint Zosimas and said to him: "Zosimas, next year on the same day bring the Immaculate Mysteries to commune me." Indeed, Saint Zosimas took the Holy Mysteries to her the following year. He communed her and said to her: "Next year you will come back to see me."
So when Saint Zosimas went the next year, he found her dead. Down in the sand she had written her name: "Mary". Because until then she hadn't told him her name. Saint Zosimas buried her, as he should, with the help of a lion sent by God to dig her grave with his claws. And this former sinner became such a great Saint! I don't know how many Saints did the asceticism she did.
An example of repentance for all us sinful people, who - whether we have committed many and serious sins or fewer - we are all sinners and need repentance, tears of repentance and much love for the Lord! Saint Mary sinned a lot, but she also loved Christ a lot. Like that sinful woman, about whom the Lord speaks in the holy Gospel (Luke 7:47). And because she loved Christ very much, with a love that cannot be described, she was able to endure forty-seven years in this awesome asceticism in the desert.
That is why today the Church brings her forward. A woman who – as the troparia of the Church say – overcame the weakness of both female nature and human nature. Brave soul! Who can do this asceticism? And yet she, the former harlot, did this awesome asceticism out of love for God. Today we admire, we wonder, we stand in awe, we are surprised by this awesome asceticism and her love towards Christ, and we also look at our own love towards Christ how poor it is. How fruitless, and we feel sorry for ourselves. And we ask Saint Mary to intercede with the Lord today, to help us, and Christ to give us at least a little of her repentance, a few of her tears, but above all to give us the divine love, the love that we should have as disciples of Christ towards Him, our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, as redeemed people through His holy and honorable Blood.
So I humbly pray, through the intercessions of Saint Mary of Egypt, now that the Holy Passion of our Lord is coming - in a few days - and we will see God crucified for our sins, that we will acquire much love for Him and thus we also will be found worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let us all beg Him to have mercy on us and help us in this.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.