St Mary of Egypt, An Icon of Repentance

Dear Parish Faithful,


An Icon of Repentance

Icon of St Mary & St Zosimas, by Fr Andrew Tregubov

Yesterday evening (March 30), we read and heard the entire Life of St. Mary of Egypt in the church as we also chanted a part of St. Andrew's Canon of Repentance.  It seemed like we had present the largest group ever for this service.

In that Life we heard that St. Mary died on April 1, in the year of our Lord 522 A.D.  Thus, April 1 is the date on which her name appears on our Church calendar as her day of commemoration.  Her "death day" is her "birthday" into the Kingdom of Heaven.  And we also commemorate her on the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent, coming up this weekend.  So, a good deal of recent and immediately upcoming focus on St. Mary of Egypt, that great "icon of repentance." 

A few years back (2011) I wrote a Meditation on St. Mary entitled "Inappropriate Material for Church?"  The point of the Meditation was to reflect upon the heavy stress on unlimited sexual license that we hear about in the opening section of her Life, a focus that can raise an eyebrow or two since it is read in church. If you would like to read more about this, here is a link to that Meditation.

In fact, I have written quite a few meditations - admittedly somewhat repetitious - that include St. Mary's Life or combine it with further comments on St. Andrew's Canon.  Those can be accessed here. At the end of the first meditation on this page, there is a link to The Life of St. Mary of Egypt in its entirety, included here for your convenience.

Or, there is a lengthy portion available on the OCA webpage.

The Great Canon and St Mary of Egypt

Dear Parish Faithful,

Icon of St Mary of Egypt, with scenes from her Life.

The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is prescribed in its entirety (about 260 troparia!) to be chanted on the fifth Thursday of Great Lent.  We were able to chant a part of the Canon yesterday evening.  In his book Great Lent, Fr. Alexander Schmemann writes the following about the place of the Canon in our Lenten journey when we arrive to the fifth Thursday:

If at the beginning of Lent this Canon was like a door leading us into repentance, now at the end of Lent it sounds like a "summary" of repentance and its fulfillment.  If at the beginning we merely listened to it, now hopefully its words have become our words, our lamentation, our hope and repentance, and also an evaluation of our Lenten effort:  how much of all this has truly been ours?  how far have we come along the path of this repentance? 

For all that which concerns us is coming to its end.  From now on we are following the disciples, "as they were on the road going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them".  (Great Lent, p. 78)

And yesterday evening we also read the deeply moving and compunctionate Life of St. Mary of Egypt.  This reading of the great saint's Life  in the prayerful atmosphere of the darkened church adds a further dimension to the depths of our Lenten liturgical experience.  In the words of Panayiotis Nellas, in his book Deification in Christ - The Nature of the Human Person:

Furthermore, St. Mary of Egypt is likewise present.  The reading of her life does not have as its aim simply to move the faithful.  It plays in the service an organic part which is at once deeper and more real.  

The Orthodox faithful know very well that the feast day of a saint is not a simple honoring of a holy person or a recollection of his life for didactic reasons.  Rather, it is a real participation in his life, his struggles, his victory and his glory.  The reading of his life takes place in order to bring the saint amongst us in a true and real manner with his whole life and all his struggles... 

The reading of the life of the saints is a liturgical act.  It takes place within another form of time, liturgical time, and together with all the other ritual elements it creates another form of space, liturgical space... 

Thus the liturgical reading of the life of St. Mary makes the saint present in the assembly of the faithful in a sacramental manner, so that she can accompany them and struggle with them in the contest of repentance and prayer.

It seems to me that we had the largest gathering of faithful for this service that at least I can recall.  I hope something of what Fr. Alexander and Panayiotis Nellas wrote was experienced by all who were present.

The Great Canon and St Mary of Egypt

Dear Parish Faithful,

Through a tree we once found death, but now we find life again through the Tree of the Cross. Let us then put to death the impulses of the passions; and with all the faithful let us pray to the Benefactor of all: that, shining with the radiance of divine actions and made beautiful by the virtues, we may attain the holy Resurrection and glorify the Savior of our souls. (Vespers of the Fifth Week of the Fast)

Another reminder that this evening (Thursday, March 29) we return to the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete. We chanted the canon at the beginning of Great Lent in four parts. On the fifth Thursday of Lent the entire canon is prescribed to be chanted. Together with the Canon, the Life of St. Mary of Egypt is read aloud in its entirety in the church. Combining the two on the parish level, we will chant an edited version of the Canon (the fourth part) and read the Life of St. Mary of Egypt. We have been doing this for about four years now. Why do we return to the Canon so late into Great Lent? A very insightful answer is provided by Fr. Alexander Schmemann in his book Great Lent:

If at the beginning of Lent this Canon was like a door leading us into repentance, now at the end of Lent it sounds like a “summary” of repentance and its fulfillment. If at the beginning we merely listened to it, now hopefully its words have become our words, our lamentation, our hope and repentance, and also an evaluation of our Lenten effort: how much of all this has truly been made ours? How far have we come along the path of this repentance? For all that which concerns us is coming to its end. From now on we are following the disciples “as they were on the road going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking on ahead of them” (MK 10:32).

(Great Lent, p. 89)

The Life of St. Mary of Egypt is quite remarkable, deeply stirring, and a verbal icon of repentance that can bring an attentive listener to tears – which I have heard and witnessed many times. It is also beautifully written, with a direct style, constant biblical allusions, and a use of literary rhetoric that is quite eloquent and moving. However, according to Panayiotis Nellas, “her life does not have as its aim simply to move the faithful.” Nellas continues:

It plays in the service an organic part which is at once deeper and more real. The Orthodox faithful know very well that the feast day of a saint is not a simple honoring of a holy person or a recollection of her life for didactic reasons. Rather, it is a real participation in her life, her struggles, her victory and her glory. The reading of her life takes place in order to bring the saint amongst us in a true and real manner with her whole life and all her struggles.

(Deification in Christ, p.166)

Manifold reasons above for keeping this evening’s service in mind – and attending – spirit, soul and body.

The service will be begin at 7:00 p.m.

Inapproprite Material for Church?

Dear Parish Faithful,

I have an amusing anecdote to share with everyone from yesterday (some would even say “cute,” but as you may have surmised by now, such a description is not quite my style). Be that as it may, it was related to me yesterday that following the homily on St. Mary of Egypt – some of which touched on her struggles with the passion of lust – one of our church school age students was heard to say: “That was inappropriate!” Well, glad to hear that someone was listening. My aim, however, was “realism” and finally edification; to deal with the story of St. Mary’s life as it presented itself in its pre-conversion and post-conversion aspects. However, once you start talking about sex in Church …

What is quite amazing, is the level of “inappropriate” discourse in the actual narrative of The Life of St. Mary of Egypt, written by St. Sophronios, Patriarch of Jerusalem. When the monk Zosimas begs St. Mary to openly reveal to him her life as it has unfolded – including its sinful beginning, we hear the following confession from the saint:

Already during the lifetime of my parents, when I was twelve years old, I renounced their love and went to Alexandria. I am ashamed to recall, how, while there, I at first ruined by maidenhood and then unrestrainedly and insatiably gave myself up to sensuality. It is more becoming to speak of this briefly, so that you may just know my passion and my lechery; for about seventeen years, forgive me, I lived like that. I was like a fire of public debauch. And it was not for the sake of gain – here I speak the pure truth. Often when they wished to pay me, I refused the money. I acted in this way so as to make as many men as possible to try to obtain me, doing free of charge what gave me pleasure. Do not think that I was rich and that was the reason why I did not take money. I lived by begging, often by spinning flax, but I had an insatiable desire and an irrepressible passion for lying in filth. This was life to me. Every kind of abuse of nature I regarded as life.

After boarding a ship that was sailing to Jerusalem, carrying on board some pilgrims going to the holy city for the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross (one of many fascinating pieces of liturgical history embedded in the Life), St. Mary continues her dreary history of a “life of a great sinner,” further embellished by some fine rhetorical flourishes:

How shall I relate to you what happened after this? Whose tongue can tell, whose ear can take in all that took place on the boat during that voyage? And to all this I frequently forced those miserable youths even against their own will. There is no mentionable or unmentionable depravity of which I was not their teacher. I am amazed, Abba, how the sea stood our licentiousness, how the earth did not open its jaws, and how it was that hell did not swallow me alive, when I had entangled in my net so many souls. But I think God was seeking my repentance. For He does not desire the death of a sinner but magnanimously awaits His return to Him. … I was not content with the youths I had seduced at sea and who had helped me get to Jerusalem; many others – citizens of the town and foreigners – I also seduced.

Considering that this Life is prescribed to be read aloud in its entirety in church on the fifth Thursday in Great Lent, this is fairly “racy” material! Perhaps an eyebrow was raised when we read this last week in church, especially for those who may have heard the actual text for the first time. Obviously, the listener is to be struck by the self-destructiveness of such behavior, rather than allowing his or her imagination to run wild with “filling in the details.”

However, if you want to avoid “inappropriate” material for the future, then you have to stop reading … the Bible! Or, at least certain episodes, which would include, but not be limited to: Ham “seeing the nakedness” of his father (Noah), an expression that some biblical scholars understand as a euphemism for copulation or possibly castration; Sodom and Gomorrah (GEN. 18); and David and Bathsheba (II SAM. 11). Yet, these unseemly episodes are so woven into the fabric of certain stories; or flesh out the full character of key biblical figures, that ignoring “sexually explicit material” only serves in truncating the text and losing its all-too-human quality, including the human propensity to sin.

Life can get messy and murky. Often enough, that murkiness is never better expressed than through human sexuality and its misuse and/or abuse. The Bible respects this aspect of human life, and thus it remains realistic, rather than project the unreality of a perfectly-formed philosophical system or structure onto life’s inherent messiness in a fallen world. Then, “we call it as we see it,” and hope that the ending is as powerful and inspiring as the repentance of St. Mary of Egypt, whose great sin was covered by a great repentance; one that to this day deeply moves our minds and hearts when we hear it yet again.

For the future, I am going to try and stick with more appropriate material!

Fr. Steven

How Much of This Has Been Made Ours?

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

St. Andrew of Crete’s Canon of Repentance is chanted on the first four evenings of Great Lent. That is the “perfect” beginning, in that Great Lent is a “school of repentance.” But the Canon is prescribed to be chanted in its entirety on the Thursday of the fifth week of Great Lent – almost at the very end. What is the purpose of repeating the Canon well into the Lenten season? An excellent answer is provided by Fr. Alexander Schmemann in his celebrated book Great Lent:

If at the beginning of Lent this Canon was like a door leading us into repentance, now at the end of Lent it sounds like a “summary” of repentance and its fulfillment. If at the beginning we merely listened to it, now hopefully its words have become our words, our lamentation, our hope and repentance, and also an evaluation of our Lenten effort: how much of all this has truly been made ours? How far have we come along the path of repentance? (Great Lent, p. 78)

Great Lent has a way of “getting away from us,” as the season wears on. Often, our well-intentioned good beginning – together with all of the goals we set for ourselves during these “all-revered days” - are undermined for a variety of reasons, including the “fatigue factor” (see the Monday Morning Meditation from earlier in the week). This is clearly behind Fr. Alexander’s analysis. Perhaps the re-intensification of that initial zeal for Great Lent as we draw near to its completion; and then its carry-over into Great and Holy Week will be the “reward” for those who were present at the service yesterday evening (more, by the way, then we have had in the past for this particular service).

In addition to St. Andrew’s Canon of Repentance (which, if done in its entirety, would include about one hundred eighty troparia with the attendant bows!), the Life of St. Mary of Egypt, written by St. Sophronios Patriarch of Jerusalem, is also prescribed to be read in its entirety together with the Canon at the same service. This we did yesterday evening. As Archbishop Kallistos comments about the place of St. Mary of Egypt in the life of the Church:

Just as the fourth Sunday is dedicated to St. John Climacus, the model of ascetics, so the fifth celebrates St. Mary of Egypt, the model of penitents. Her life … sets before us a true verbal icon of the essence of repentance. (The Lenten Triodion, p. 56)

Concerning the reading of this Life within the context of a liturgical service of the Church, Panayiotis Nellas writes the following:

Furthermore, St. Mary of Egypt is likewise present. The reading of her life does not have as its aim simply to move the faithful. It plays in the service an organic part which is at once deeper and more real. The Orthodox faithful know very well that the feast day of a saint is not a simple honoring of a holy person or a recollection of her life for didactic reasons. Rather, it is a real participation in her life, her struggles, her victory and her glory. The reading of her place takes place in order to bring the saint amongst us in a true and real manner with her whole life and all her struggles.

… Thus the liturgical reading of the life of St. Mary makes the saint present in the assembly of the faithful in a sacramental manner, so that she can accompany them and struggle with them in the contest of repentance and prayer. For this reason, at the end of each ode of the Great Canon there are two troparia in which the faithful address themselves to her:

"God Whom you loved and for Whom you longed, Whose path you Followed, O Mother, found you and granted you repentance in His Compassion. Pray, therefore, that we may be freed from sin and Adversity." (Ode Seven)

As the Canon exhorts us to repentance, the Life of St. Mary of Egypt places before our gaze a spectacular instance of repentance as embodied in one of the great saints of the Church. In an historical person of flesh and blood, we encounter the real fruits of repentance. And we discover the great “cost” of repentance, that only through “blood, sweat and tears” is the movement back toward God even possible. St. Mary of Egypt’s life can prove to be very jarring – perhaps even offensive – to our middle-class standards of Christian behavior and moral rectitude; but it is precisely in the radicalness of her repentance that we can witness the depths of the Gospel promise of salvation for any and all sinners who sincerely repent. No sin is too great for the mercy of God; for it was St. Gregory the Theologian who said somewhere that our sins are like drops of water in the ocean of the divine mercy. Hers was the life of a great sinner, and it resulted in a great repentance. We are convinced that we are not great sinners, but what is the corresponding depth of our repentance?

In a further note by Archbishop Kallistos, this may prove to be of some interest to those familiar with St. Mary’s extraordinary life, and the seemingly impossible nature of her life in the desert:

Some modern writers have questioned the historical accuracy of St. Sophronios’ narrative, but there is in itself nothing impossible about such a story. In the year 1890 the Greek priest Joachim Spetsieris found a woman hermit in the desert beyond the Jordan, living almost exactly as St. Mary must have done. (The Lenten Triodion, p. 56)

We will again turn our attention to St. Mary of Egypt as we commemorate her on the upcoming Fifth Sunday of Great Lent. That commemoration will begin on Saturday evening and the celebration of Great Vespers, the service that inaugurates a new liturgical day. Many of the stichera of that service are in honor of St. Mary of Egypt.

This evening we will chant the Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God in its entirety, a long structured hymn called “one of the great marvels of Greek religious poetry” by Archbishop Ware.

Fr Steven

The Life of St Mary of Egypt

Dear Parish Faithful and Friends in Christ,

GREAT LENT: The Thirty Third Day

The Great Canon of St. Andrew is chanted on the first four days of Great Lent. But it is prescribed to be chanted in its entirety on the Fifth Thursday of Great Lent also. Since the Canon has about 260 troparia, each to be accompanied by bows (prostrations in monasteries!), that is more than a bit challenging. 

During the Canon chanted on the Fifth Thursday, the Life of St. Mary of Egypt is also prescribed to be read in its entirety. This Life was written by St. Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem in the 7th c. 

Yesterday evening, I selected the fourth part of the Canon to be chanted and then broke up the Life of St. Mary of Egypt into three parts, read after the third, sixth, and ninth odes of the Canon. St. Mary of Egypt is a living icon of repentance, and her entire life is a startling revelation of the mercy and grace of God that forgives all sin that is genuinely repented of.

In his book Great Lent, Fr. Alexander Schmemann explains the return to the Great Canon of St. Andrew in the fifth week in the following manner:

If at the beginning of Lent this Canon was like a door leading us into repentance, now at the end of Lent it sounds like a "summary" of repentance and its fulfillment. If at the beginning we merely listened to it, now hopefully its words have become our words, our lamentation, our hope and repentance, and also an evaluation of our lenten effort: how much of all this has truly been made ours? How far have we come along the path of this repentance?

The beautifully written and compunctionate Life of St. Mary of Egypt is meant to edify those who hear it in faith. As Panagiotis Nellas writes:

The Life of St. Mary of Egypt is read, so that the intellect and will of the believer may be detached from love of the world and, following in the footsteps of the saint, may be guided into the heart of the desert, into the heart of the mystery of repentance. (Deification in Christ, p. 164)

Yet, there is even a deeper purpose behind reading this Life in a liturgical setting. Panagiotis Nellas further writes:

Thus the liturgical reading of the Life of St. Mary makes the saint present in the assembly of the faithful in a sacramental manner, so that she can accompany them and struggle with them in the contest of repentance of prayer. For this reason, at the end of each canticle of the Great Canon there are two troparia in which the faithful address themselves to her:

God Whom you loved and for Whom you longed, Whose path you followed, O Mother, found you. Pray, therefore, that we may be freed from sin and adversity. (Ibid, p. 167)

Hearing St. Mary's wonderful Life in this setting then brought to life one of the refrains at the end of many of the Canon's odes, of "O Venerable Mother Mary of Egypt, pray unto God for us." Her life is the very flesh and blood embodiment of the Canon's entire purpose: to lead sinners to repentance. Thus, with God "all things are possible."

I will try and bring out other aspects of her Life in Sunday's homily.

You may read the complete 'Life of St Mary of Egypt' here.


Fr. Steven