Healing the Unspeakable: The Life of Saint Mary of Egypt
by Presbytera Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald
(FitzGerald, Kyriaki Karidoyanes. "Healing the Unspeakable: The Life of Saint Mary of Egypt" in "Encountering Women of Faith: The St. Catherine's Vision Collection, Volume 2" Edited by Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2011) 173-194.)
"The power of Your Cross, O Christ, has worked wonders,
for even the woman who was once a harlot
chose to follow the ascetic way.
Casting aside her weakness, bravely she opposed the devil;
and having gained the prize of victory,
she now intercedes for our souls."
Introduction
St. Mary of Egypt is remembered annually by Eastern Orthodox Christians on the fifth Sunday of Great Lent. It is no coincidence that the Orthodox liturgical calendar brings her life into particular focus during this special season. As we prepare for celebrating the Lord’s Resurrection at Pascha (Easter), we are encouraged to reflect more deeply upon our relationship with God, neighbor, our own selves, and creation in order to bring our lives more in line with the gospel and the will of God for us.
Her life story, in particular, is an invitation for repentance and healing because she survived a profoundly difficult life. Many practicing Christians would be scandalized to know that this St. Mary led a life of extreme debauchery, aggressively selling her services as a prostitute for many years. Some would even use the old movie designation of “X-rated” to describe her and her exploits. She was X-rated due to her sexual practices. She was X-rated due to her willful, callous connection with others. And she was X-rated due to the way others in return had dehumanized her in their minds and hearts.
Because of these extreme and perilous dimensions of her life, more than one sermon about her over the years has left me feeling uneasy, even cold, because of the perspective of the speaker. All too often, there seemed to be more of a titillating focus on Mary’s early life than appreciation for the arduous journey of a human person starting from virtually unspeakable circumstances. There seemed to be little recognition that as a result of experiencing profound forgiveness, healing, and transformation, St. Mary of Egypt became an emissary of God, serving as a provocative witness to His endless mercy, love, and joy for others.
The Tradition of the Church records her life in a disturbing and graphic manner. My portrayal in this chapter is perhaps less graphic than what has been written in some liturgical and historical texts. (For a brief, yet excellent, study on this saint, see Benedicta Ward, Harlots of the Desert: A Study in Repentance in Early Monastic Sources (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1987), 26-56. See also the related chapter in this volume, “St. Mary of Egypt: A Provocateur of Parrhesia” by Iulia Corduneanu Curtright.) St. Mary of Egypt was restored to health from a chaotic and loveless existence that could be called a living death; furthermore, she was changed in ways that many of us today would never even imagine.
Over the course of many years, the study of the life of St. Mary of Egypt was one to which I would return. With each attempt to engage her life, I found that cumulative experience from the private, vocational, and professional dimensions of my life all contributed to obtaining a richer appreciation, as well as sparking new questions. Partly because of things that affected my life, her story became more compelling every time I would “visit” with her in the presence of God during the past twenty years.
In the last few decades, more than any other time in living memory, science has begun to scrutinize the ways that people are impacted by rejection, abuse, and trauma, in the family and elsewhere. I have had the privilege to study and receive clinical training regarding these issues. I have also enjoyed the honor of working closely with a number of great and inspiring people who have survived various types of abandonment, maltreatment, and trauma. The images of abuse survival in my depiction of St. Mary’s early life are expressed truthfully, yet conservatively. In other words, whatever really happened to her that led her to a life of such gross abasement of self and others was probably worse than the circumstances described in this chapter.
The account I am about to share is written as if Mary entered my office, sat down before me, and began to speak. I find myself seeking the mercy and help of the Lord, as well as asking for the saint’s direction and entreating you, the reader, for your patience and forgiveness as I dare to share her story with you in the first person.
+ PART ONE +
My name is Mary. I lived during the fifth century and was born not too far from the illustrious city of Alexandria in Egypt. My early life is not much to write about. In fact, there is not much about my childhood in surviving historical documents. But what I can tell you is that my family life was far from happy. When I grew up I ran away from home and headed straight for the great city, so that I could begin building a better life for myself. I was twelve years old.
You may wonder, “What would cause a twelve-year-old child of that era to run away from home?” By looking into the next phase of my life, you may obtain some insight into this. You will notice that at twelve, I ran toward a life of squalor, depravity, and gross sexual misconduct. For the next seventeen years, I was a prostitute. I sold my body indiscriminately and as often as I could, to anyone who interested me. I was particularly famous for my sarcastic wit and aggressive exploits in tracking down my patrons. I mocked them mercilessly, and I sometimes even stalked them down, not unlike wild game. I remember, especially, the sour disgust and contempt I felt toward them, even as I desperately chased after their caresses. These extremes did not faze me. Deep within me I felt nothing. I felt dead.
For the sake of decorum, I will not divulge too many details about how abysmal my life became. Bear in mind, however, that some Church historians have been honest enough to record that I would have performed my sexual favors “on the house,” so to speak—gratis, nada, free of charge! There were times when I performed these acts simply for the thrill. Yes, these Church historians were correct in their portrayal.
Please consider how this could be so, as my biographers in centuries past did not. My behavior is not unusual for children who grow up in an atmosphere of overwhelming, ongoing unreliability. From my earliest days, there was a dearth of authentic human connection and safety to direct my path. I lived in an environment where inconsistencies and abuse abounded, including sexual abuse. Rather than being tenderly guided and cherished by emotionally healthy parents, I was progressively neglected and devalued. Rather than being seen as a beloved daughter of God, I became invisible. I was treated like an object, a worthless commodity. I was used to satisfy my pitiful father’s whims and business dealings.
Many survivors of abuse, including sexual abuse, do not grow up to become abusers of others, as I did. In fact, many persons experience healing and transcend very difficult childhood histories, leading to wonderful and fruitful lives, praise God! Nevertheless, we must bear in mind that when certain powerful, life-effacing circumstances are right, it is not uncommon for people to lash out in the only way they know how: targeting themselves and others. This is partially because most of the abuse they survive occurs in secret. Acts of neglect and abandonment, lack of concern for safety, weak interpersonal connections demonstrating a failure of trustworthy, mutual love, even psychological intimidation and oppression, happen unseen. The casual observer is usually oblivious to this powerful “anti-gospel” (or kakovagelion, in Greek) reigning within the life of the family. Perpetrators, knowingly or not, are conveying stunning contempt for the mystery of the human person, created in the “image and likeness of God.”
When the needed healing does not occur, children may seek restitution for their indescribable loss by acting out the abuse anew in their adult lives. This may be their only way to experience some form of connection, even if “connecting” means passing on to others what was done to them in the past. Acting out in this manner was the only way I felt alive...and home is where it all started.
After I left home, I had no family, ho friends, and no hope. It did not even dawn on me that I needed to save for the future, let alone invest my money in order to prepare for it. I just barely subsisted by using my street smarts and whatever my body could get for me. In a deep sense I was continuing the same pattern of abuse perpetrated against me. I was only fooling myself in thinking that at least I was free finally, living on "my terms.”
This extreme manner of trying to feel alive served me poorly and was only a temporary means of relief. Like one who misuses a medication or alcohol to numb pain, I would soon enough wake up and return to my senses, finding myself back in the same cold, empty and flat existence called “my life.” Yes, mine is an extreme yet genuine example of someone running away from home in search of the “geographical cure.” I was too fragile and afraid to ask the difficult, brutally honest questions, the questions inviting me to examine what really went wrong in my life. For many of these later years, I may have helped contribute to my own problems. This is because wherever I went, I still had to face myself.
After about seventeen years of living this way, my routine had begun to feel very old. Like an alcoholic or a drug or sex addict who knows he or she can no longer continue in the same way, I was desperate for a change, only there was none in sight. I did not even have the language or the thought forms in my mind to conceptualize the possibility that things could be different. All I knew was that I was growing increasingly uncomfortable living in my own skin and I could no longer bear it. But there was no way I could admit this to myself. So, I continued in my familiar, miserable way of living.
During this time, I caught myself paying attention to a growing group of people in the illustrious city of Alexandria. They seemed to treat each other and their neighbors differently from the way others did. They were called “Christians.” Even while on the job, I managed to study them from afar for some time. They behaved with unusual humility and kindness, addressing each other often as “brother” or “sister,” "mother" or "father,” when they were not even related! I found this very odd, because the few blood relatives I knew never treated anyone with such attention and gentleness.
These Christians were consistent, too! They did not employ the “double-speak” so easily mouthed by the movers and shakers of my society. Their “yes” was “yes” and their "no” truly was “no.” They were even merciful to strangers. Although I had trapped numerous weaker members of their fellowship in my bed, there were still many among them I could not ensnare, and I never could quite figure out why. Some of these people, even knowing who I was, treated me kindly. This really confused me.
Yes, by now I was “damaged goods” in the extreme. Even in today’s better circumstances, persons like me often do not live to a very old age. Beginning in childhood, the inner ravages of mistreatment and neglect perpetrated on the soul and body may extract their toll in numerous ways. These extreme and painful circumstances of childhood are often at the root of serious physical illnesses, which may develop later on in adult life. This sad fact, especially in recent years, has been repeatedly documented through the explosion of clinical research examining the effects of trauma, abandonment, and abuse.
My life was certainly a living death. I could not grow as a person because I was never engaged consistently with love by another human being. I could not grow in the “image and likeness of God” in which I was created because no one was there to convey the love of the living God to me. Even now, to say this to you causes me to twinge in pain. God abhors the abuse of all His children!
Our loving God profoundly understands that many of these, His beautiful creations from desperate backgrounds, could not come to know Him during their earthly lives. My story is all the more incredible, for I certainly “beat the odds” for children who find themselves in my kind of situation. But there was much suffering before the story reached its conclusion. The unbearably heavy boredom of my bleak and meaningless life led me to follow, even stalk, Christians more closely...and, oh my, I am now embarrassed to say, I really did begin to annoy them.
One day, as I was amusing myself by watching from afar the movements of a group of Christian men from Egypt and Libya, I realized they were preparing to board a ship heading for Jerusalem to celebrate the solemn feast day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Brazen as I was, I wanted to go as well, thinking that any change would be an entertaining distraction. Surely, there would be plenty of customers on board and in the city of Jerusalem, once the ship arrived there. Sarcastic and persistent, I harassed the poor fellows so much that they finally snuck me on board. On the ship I continued my old practices. In fact, I was virtually insatiable. I enticed, seduced, even coerced the unwilling...as many as I could, to lie with me. A desperate gnawing, a hunger that some would even call insane, exploded deep within me. I would do anything not to face it.
More than ever before, I gave my body away. But the more I tried to give myself away through each sexual exploit, the emptier and more dead I felt afterward. No matter how much I tried to distract myself from the blight of my existence, it seemed to return to me with compounded interest. And so I kept performing the only “work” I ever knew at this literally unstoppable pace.
I can only attribute the fact that God did not deal with me then to His ineffable mercy and loving-kindness. He knew everything I was feeling and thinking. He knew, especially, how utterly void and dead I felt inside. I learned only later that sometimes, before a person “bottoms out” preceding a crisis that leads to healing from a life of sin, addiction, and/or compulsive behaviors, that person’s behavior may change for the worse — sometimes, much worse — before it becomes better. (Often placing others and ourselves in the way of far more danger, as well! Tragically, countless souls have never succeeded in passing through this stage of acting out. These lives now rest in the loving hands of the living God.) This was true, at least, for me. That God was able to love me even during this, the lowest point in my life, still overwhelms me and brings me to tears. I was hardened, dead, and extremely cynical. At age twenty-nine, I was old and at the very end of my game.
Finally we reached Jerusalem. I was able to follow the crowds as they prepared for the liturgical celebration. Even then, I was actively engaged in the only profession I ever knew, watching from a distance as the ecclesial events progressed, while seeking the amorous affections and downfall of my next client.
I share these details with you not so much to shock you, but to show you how any person, no matter how internally lifeless he or she may be, as I was, can be brought to an encounter with the loving God Himself. Please bear this in mind.
The Lord Jesus came to the world proclaiming that the love of God is already with us, as He inaugurated the Kingdom through His Person. All God asks of us is to repent. Repentance, as I am sure you already know, refers to the Greek word metanoia. This word means a radical change of mind and heart; it is a transformation of the human person’s nous.
And although nous is usually translated from biblical Greek as “mind” or “intelligence,” its fullest meaning points to its Semitic roots. These roots refer to the depth of our souls, the place of “the mind in the heart,” which lies at the foundation of our being. It is in this place that what we value most deeply and who we are come together, for “where your treasure is, there your heart lies also” (Matt 6:21). A number of holy lovers of God (that is, saints) have even sometimes identified the nous with the “heart” or “core” of a person. (See Kyriaki FitzGerald and Thomas FitzGerald, Living the Beatitudes: Perspectives from Orthodox Spirituality (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006), 219-58)
From the secret recesses of our depths, God calls us to turn to Him, as He is our Source and the Author of life. The more we turn away from the Truth, from the loving God, the more we throw ourselves into our own self-absorbed darkness. And without this true Light, left to our own devices, we so easily mistake our darkness for light (cf. Matt 6:23). This is precisely what happened to me. The “light” and “life” I was chasing through all of my existence was actually my own finite, ego-based, self-absorbed, inner darkness. It was a living death, and I didn’t even know it.
Even at this point in my story, I was brazenly managing my craft, but somehow I still kept following the pilgrims to the courtyard of the cathedral, and from there I watched. At daybreak I saw throngs of pilgrims entering the cathedral to venerate a portion of our Lord’s Holy Cross that had been brought out for that special day. Intrigued, I blended into the middle of the crowd so that I could enter and see what was taking place.
But as I reached the threshold of the entryway, I was thrown back. Not even thinking twice about it, I tried a second time...a third time...even a fourth time. Each time I struggled to sneak into the church, it felt as if powerful sentries would block my way. The force was so strong that I felt bruised and beaten up. For quite some time I was utterly broken and transfixed.
Suddenly, in a moment of clarity, I realized that in no way was I pure enough to enter this gateway. Yes, by purity I do mean my sinfulness, my profoundly hardened, cynical existence, and the way I treated my life and my body, as well as the lives and bodies of many others: like garbage. But I mean far more here.
I am pointing to the Greek word “parthenia,” which is often translated into English as “virginity.” “Parthenia” and “virginity” do indicate an unconditional physical abstinence from sexual relations. But “parthenia” refers first of all to our purity of heart in the presence of God. This is a foundation of radical integrity, and it is unconditional; it takes hold from the inside out. This integrity refers to our personal unconditional surrender, from the very depths of our being, to the life and love of the living God. Being “pure” in this way grounds us in Reality, which is our abiding in the presence of the living God of absolute love. This is truly how Christians traditionally experience and approach reality.(For more on this issue, see my Persons in Communion: A Theology of Authentic Relationships (Berkeley, CA: InterOrthodox Press, 2006)).
And my life was so far from this! I realized all of this as I was standing there, transfixed at the threshold of the church. I had hit bottom. I recognized the fact that I was an utter counterfeit in the way I lived my life. It was not based in Reality. I had become so accustomed to turning my face away from Truth that I needed help from beyond me just to become honest with myself. I needed help from beyond my experience of the world in order to face the depths of despair in which I had been living all these years. And help did finally come.
There, in that instant, I noticed the beautiful icon of our Lady, Mary, the Mother of our Lord and God. From the bits and pieces of stories I had managed to glean during the previous months, I knew who she was. She was so beautiful! As I gazed upon her, it seemed that I felt for the very first time in my life the indescribable, sweet purity of a Mother’s love.
She seemed to hold me there—yes, even cradle me—in the depths of her loving gaze. I felt as if she could see right through me. The entire area between us was flooded with Light beyond description. The crowds of pilgrims seemed to fall far away into the background. It was as if only she and I were there together. This Light penetrated my own being and somehow, with an ability that did not originate from me, I drank this in. I was not unlike a famished baby nursing, gratefully, with adult tears in her eyes, at her Mother’s breast. Please believe me, my brothers and sisters, that I had never, ever experienced a Mother’s unconditional love until then.
I do not know how much time passed. No words were exchanged. Only ineffable relief and love were communicated. Finally, when it seemed that I had fed enough on this inexpressible, life-giving sweetness, I began to come to my senses for the very first time.
At that point, I cried out to her, “Help me, beloved Mother. I am unworthy of entering this sacred place. Only now do I realize why I have not been able to enter. Uphold me, embrace me and help me! Help me to enter, and I will do whatever you instruct me to do. I desire True Life. I will listen and obey you, O Beautiful Mother of our God, with a grateful and happy heart even as the very least of your children.”
A weight of unspeakable proportions had been lifted from me. The dark and ominous cloud of doom evaporated in that very moment. Because of this Mother’s love, I was no longer alone, trapped, or, rather, frozen in the chaotic darkness of my own finitude, cut off from true connection with others, as well as from the loving, thrice-holy God Himself.
This cleansing and healing offered me relief and joy. And this joy spawned a new, deep inner urgency to proceed more deeply into the church so that I, too, might venerate our Lord’s Precious and Holy Cross. This newborn connection with our Beautiful Mother made my initial baby steps toward Christ seem effortless. Even though the edifice was noisy and crowded, I walked peacefully. In a way that cannot be described, it felt as if I was being physically drawn in by Love, and that I was finally home. Do not underestimate what the power and love of God can do for the healing and transformation of human souls!
At this point, not unlike the many throngs of pious pilgrims, I, too, was permitted the gift of falling down in utter thanksgiving and joy, to pray before the Cross of her Son and our Lord. And when I did, in that one instant, I was ambushed—again—by the indefinable divine sweetness! Dazed and overwhelmed, this time I was caught up in the sublime mystery of Life and Love eternal, bestowed upon all of fallen creation through this piece of Wood. Heaven and earth would never be the same, and neither would I.
I worshipped our loving Lord at the foot of His Precious Cross for the first time that day. With all of my heart, I did not want this to end. Turning to her, I opened my heart to my and our loving Mother and Intercessor. In that moment, I heard with my spirit and ears: “If you cross over the Jordan, you will find rest.”
Immediately, I perceived what this meant. I left the church then, at about 9:00 a.m. Out of the blue, in the courtyard a kind stranger appeared and out of pity gave me three small coins, with which I bought three loaves of bread. This was a surprise blessing from God for my journey! With these three loaves under my arm, I set off on my way, and by sunset I had arrived at the Church of St. John the Baptist by the Jordan River. It was there that I was baptized and received the sacrament of Holy Communion for the first time. In retrospect, I recognize that at this moment, the first half of my life’s journey had been fulfilled.
On the next day, I passed to the other side of the Jordan, and there I prayed again to our Beautiful Mother and Intercessor. I asked, I implored her to direct me to go wherever it pleased her Son, and our life-giving God, to send me. And indeed, I was led on a very long journey through the desert, where eventually I came to a small cave that would be my cell for the next forty-seven years.
The Truth urges me on to tell you two more things about my life. First of all, this next very long period of my life became my honeymoon, so to speak, with Christ. I came to know Him and depend upon Him in the daily spiritual and physical struggles of the desert. By getting to know Him, I also came to become more fully the person God had intended me to be.
But just as in any marital honeymoon, difficulties arose. These difficulties were not the fault of my Beloved and Divine Bridegroom, but of fallen, earthbound, and unworthy me. The battle of getting to know myself, growing in the manner God intended, was coming.
Yes, the floodgates of love and paradise had been opened to me. Nevertheless, my accepting and trusting the ever-present Light, Love, and Person of our Lord in the unknown depths and secret recesses of my soul was still a work in progress. Gently, ever so gently, through the extremes of Jordanian sun and cold, He healed the damage caused by a lifetime of sin, despair, and abuse. Of course, this took much time and effort on my part. Since the Church’s foundation many have received this divine gift of quiet struggle and ongoing healing. It is a gift based on the fact that God loves us first. He is always the one who reaches out to us, even if it seems to us on our finite human level that we are the ones initiating the contact.
Once we experience the gift of this loving connection, we also receive a second gift of sorts. After we taste the refreshment of our Lord’s sweetness, we begin to obtain a greater sense of how altogether unprepared we are for the visitation of the all-loving God. We notice more and more our own inner cobwebs, which were invisible to us before because of the lack of Light. And so in the following years, over and over again, I had the privilege of facing all of the demons that diverted and prevented my heart, soul, and mind from experiencing the love of the living God — in other words, from experiencing Reality. This inner hardness had also kept me from discovering my true identity as a unique and cherished child of God.
The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, graciously has refrained from recording what these specific personal demons, difficulties, and challenges were, as a way to protect my privacy. But the general categories have been recorded, and even these indicate that they were “legion.” Some of them spewed loathsome, self-condemning, and life-effacing messages toward me, toward others, and sometimes toward both. These demons very successfully distracted me from seeking the “one thing necessary” (Luke 10:42) and helped deaden me in many ways. During those early days of my lackluster life, I had tried to feel alive and sometimes even thought I was alive, but I truly did not know what life was, until Life tackled me.
Cradled in the arms of the living God of love, a new journey began both in my heart and in the safe confines of the Jordanian desert. What a surprise! Slowly, ever so slowly, I was changing as a result of His tender loving-kindness. This was almost as marvelous a discovery as the initial encounter with God Himself—namely, to realize with every fiber of my being that I, too, unworthy as I was, had been created for the love of the living God, by this same loving God whose love saturates and contains all of creation.
+ PART TWO +
At this point, brothers and sisters, I am compelled to go on with my story. I will now go out on a limb with you and reveal something that it was not my original intention to share. Circumstances beyond my control have obliged me to reveal this part of the story. Some may say that I have saved the best, or most amazing witness, for last.
I lived a solitary life of prayer in the desert all of those forty-seven years. Some who have met me before you have wondered and asked how the Church ever came to know about my life. This is a good question. Surely, my life would never have become known if it was not God’s pleasure to reveal it to you. But this next part of the story teaches us much about faith, courage, and integrity, though not my own.
Forty-six years into my honeymoon with Christ, I was “found,” or “discovered,” so to speak, by the holy presbyter-monk Zossimas. He also became my friend, pastor, and confessor. It is he who heard me confess my life story, recorded it, and eventually shared it with the world, reflecting God’s pleasure. I would like to tell you more about him now, and will try to do so as if I were a third person, an observer.
Before he met me, Fr. Zossimas had been serving as the abbot and spiritual father of a large monastic community for men in Palestine. At the opposite end of life experience when compared to mine, he grew up in safety and in the bosom of the Church. From the time he was a toddler, he was raised in the same Christian monastery. This reflects an ancient Christian custom, dating back to the early Church, of dedicating at least one child in a Christian family to monastic and/or ordained service in the Church. This custom is still practiced in parts of the ancient Orthodox Christian world even now, particularly in the Middle East, Africa, and many parts of Greece.
From the very beginning of his life in the monastery, Zossimas demonstrated great love for monastic life and excelled quickly in every known ascetic discipline. As he grew into adulthood, through no effort of self-promotion, he earned a reputation as the “perfect” monk. He had become so well respected for his rigorous discipline and ability to offend no one that monks from his own community, as well as others living at a distance, sought his spiritual direction.
At the heart of his discipline was his fervent desire to achieve “purity of heart.” This is a response to the Lord’s teaching found in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt 5:8). As I mentioned earlier, “purity of heart” refers to a kind of unconditional integrity in our relationship with God. It is the foundation of holiness. Through “purity of heart” our self-centeredness and sins no longer cloud our vision, allowing us to perceive and respond in truth to God. This seems, and indeed is, impossible for human beings to achieve, but as Christians we believe that “all things are possible with God” (Matt 19:26; Mark 10:27).
Throughout the Christianized Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire), numerous monasteries had been established in the larger cities. As early as the fifth century, being abbot of a large monastic community was a highly respected ecclesial vocation. By the time Zossimas was in his mid-fifties, he had already been serving within his monastery as abbot and spiritual father for many years. He was “at the top of his game.” He accepted his responsibilities without complaint, aware and appreciative of the many gifts God had given him, and respected the confidences of his fellow monks. But he was also aware that, according to everything he knew, he had achieved all there was to achieve in the monastic life.
As this awareness grew, he started to feel a kind of spiritual uneasiness, even psychological anxiety. As much as he profoundly loved his spiritual sons and brothers in the monastery, he began to be assailed by disturbing thoughts and feelings, wondering, in effect, “Is this all that faithful discipline brings?” or “Is this everything?”
In time he came to appreciate that these were important questions; the disturbing concerns were the product of a growing relationship with God. As he considered them, he realized that even though he was a spiritual father, he, too, needed spiritual direction. He, too, needed the guidance of someone more spiritually mature.
He began to ask more probing and courageous self-searching questions: “Is there anyone out there who can help me?” “Is there anyone who could serve as my spiritual guide and teacher, and as intercessor to God on my behalf?” “How do I go about searching for this person?” He began to feel some hope when the thought occurred to him that the loving God was near and always ready to help. So he began more earnestly to pray and fast about this, asking God to help him discern what to do next.
During prayer, as he was yet again deeply considering what to do next, he saw a man standing before him who told him, “Indeed, Zossimas, you have gone far in your monastic effort, but your life here has taken you as far as it can. If you truly desire to know more, to know God Himself, you must learn from the example set by Abraham. Leave the comfort and familiarity of your father’s house and seek God in foreign terrain. Go to the monastery that is located near the Jordan River.” ("Harlots of the Desert" by Benidicta Ward offers a more detailed, beautiful rendition of this encounter, directly translating patristic texts; see 37-38.) This was a difficult directive for Zossimas to hear, as he had never left his monastery before. Nevertheless, he left immediately for the River Jordan and eventually found the monastery, even though it was in such an obscure location that most monks in the region did not know about it. Truly, his being able to find this community reflects the desire of God for his growth and salvation.
Zossimas was a bit of an enigma to the abbot and the brothers there. They realized that he was no foreigner to the spiritual life, yet he refused to identify himself to them fully. To the abbot he said, “I have heard about your monastery, that your community’s life helps one grow in an intimate relationship with Christ our God. I wish to seek our Lord here if you will give your blessing, Father.” The wise abbot reminded Zossimas that it is God who heals and restores our relationship with Him, and welcomed him into the brotherhood, though he still had not fully disclosed who he was.
Zossimas soon came to admire the level of spiritual experience and discipline of his new brothers. Above all things they sought to know and grow in Christ. For the first time in what seemed a very long time, Zossimas was happy. Released from the constrictions of his previous responsibilities, he found it an honor and joy to be in the company of such spiritually mature persons, all seeking together the “one thing necessary.” He certainly had nothing new to teach them. He was edified by their example and inspired to strive all the more earnestly to know God.
There was one aspect of the monastery’s discipline with which Zossimas was unfamiliar. This was their most important spiritual rule. On the Sunday that initiates Great Lent, all of the brothers would gather together after the celebration of the Liturgy. They ate one last simple meal, privately collected whatever provisions they each deemed necessary, and gave each other a farewell embrace. Then, each of them crossed the Jordan River, heading for the desert, in order to begin his personal Lenten vigil. At the heart of this rule was a rigorous silence. They separated from one another during this time as a way to safeguard the privacy of every brother’s prayer and fasting discipline. They did not want to be a source of comparison, scandal, or temptation to each other.
Except for one or two priest-monks who stayed behind to conduct services, the monks remained in the desert, fasting and praying, and returned six weeks later to celebrate together the feast of Palm Sunday. Zossimas enthusiastically looked forward to following this discipline. And as he set out on this arduous desert journey, he noticed that the desire to receive a blessing from a holy person of God returned to him, stronger than ever before. A deep longing originating from the depths of his soul urged him to travel further and further, deeper and deeper, into the desert.
“Perhaps now,” he thought, “God will bless me with meeting the spiritual father from whom I have so long desired to receive a blessing.” He felt an almost palpable expectation that this beloved person was close at hand, somehow.
For twenty days he prayed and walked. During his journey he saw no one, not an animal or a bird or even the shadow of one. This absence of encounters fed his strange sense of joyful, palpable expectation, a feeling that never left him. Then at about noon on the twentieth day, facing east and nearing the end of his noonday prayers, he thought he saw with his peripheral vision the outline or shadow of a human being darting about among the large boulders. Fearing that this could be some kind of malevolent spirit, he made the sign of the cross and finished his prayers.
His prayers completed, he looked back and realized that he did see something, or, rather, someone. It was an old woman, with skin scorched black by the sun, and short, wooly white hair. She was completely and utterly naked. Zossimas leaped for joy at the sight of her! Yes, I am referring to myself here. It is awkward speaking to you about myself in the third person. But, who else but the loving God could direct a person to the very relationship he or she needed in the middle of nowhere? Forgetting his age and exhaustion, Zossimas began to chase me. “Please, stop, let me meet you!” he shouted. “Grant me, an old man, a prayer and a blessing for the sake of God, who despises no one!” he cried. (Cf. Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 40-44.) But despite his tears and imploring, I kept eluding him. At this point in our stories, both figuratively and literally, I was vulnerable and exposed in new ways!
After what turned out to be a long chase in the midday desert sun, Zossimas could go no further. He was unable to run any more, and stopped in what seemed to be the middle of a dry riverbed. I raced up an embankment and hid behind a large rock. Zossimas burst into tears, grieving over this lost opportunity. The sounds of his weeping broke my heart.
As he wept, I could not bear watching him in pain, so I called out to him, “Father Zossimas, please forgive me, as I am a sinful woman, naked and unable to face you for reasons of decency. Grant, I beg you, the prayer of this sinful woman and toss me your outer cloak, so that I may cover my weakness and turn to you and receive your blessing.” (Cf. Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 40-44.)
Zossimas seemed to tremble as he heard my voice. God granted him the ability to sense that I knew who he was. Through the eyes of our tender-hearted God, I saw him. He realized that this could only have been revealed through the Holy Spirit. He finally found the humble servant of God for whom he had been waiting all this time.
Taking off his faded, tattered cloak, he tossed it over to me and turned his back. A minute later I approached him and asked, “Why is it that you have come all this way, Father? Why do you wish to see such a sinful woman as me? You have gone through so much trouble; what could I possibly have to offer you?”
For some reason, my addressing him in this manner frightened Fr. Zossimas, and he knelt down in the sand, bowed low, and asked me for a blessing, saying the customary, “Eulogeite!” (“Bless!”). He did not dare to look up at this point. This scene overwhelmed me, and I, too, knelt down in the sand, bowed low to him, and asked him for his blessing, also saying the customary, “Eulogeite” And so there we were, two aged adults, prostrating before each other in the hot desert sand.
“Eulogeite!" “Eulogeite!” “Eulogeite!” “Eulogeite!” We remained on the ground asking one another for a blessing, several times. This scene must have seemed funny to everyone in heaven, but I feel sure God warmly received our actions, pleased by the sweetness of the tender love and humility expressed by each toward the other.
After what must have been a very long time, I insisted that Zossimas offer his blessing to me, reminding him that “it is only proper for you to give your blessing to me, as you serve our gracious God through the dignity of the priestly office. For many years you have served Him faithfully at His holy table and offered the sacrifice of Christ.” (Cf. Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 40-44.)
For some reason, this seemed to cause Zossimas to panic. His heart raced, and he began to perspire. With great difficulty he was able to say, “O mother in the Spirit, it is plain from this insight that all of your life you have dwelt with God and have nearly died to the world. It is plain above all that grace is given you, because you called me by my name and recognized me as a priest, although you have never seen me before. But because grace is recognized not by office, but by gifts of the Spirit, bless me, for God’s sake, and pray for me out of the kindness of your heart.” Overwhelmed by his love, I gave in to the plea of this deeply cherished man of God and said, “Blessed is God, who cares for the salvation of souls,” and he responded with, “Amen.” (Cf. Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 40-44.) We then helped one another up, sore knees and all, and found a more shady and suitable location to talk. Together we prayed and shared our stories.
This story recorded by Fr. Zossimas is about how repentance affected the two of us. There is more to the story, but suffice it to say that he offered me the precious Body and Blood of our Lord, and later, with the help of God, he also buried my body after I had departed this world. The Lord blessed him with a very long and happy life as a monk at the monastery by the River Jordan. He died peacefully at one hundred years of age.
I share this part of the story as an act of respect to those who asked in the past, “How did the Church ever come to know you?” Surely, as many in the world have now become acquainted with both our stories, it is of the will of God.
+ + +
Allow me to end this visit by sharing three important lessons that I learned during my forty-seven-year honeymoon with Christ. Perhaps you will consider packing these along with you, like the surprise gift of three loaves I received as I set out for the Jordan, as you proceed with your own spiritual journey.
First of all, know that the loving God has never ceased loving you. Do not be fooled by other voices that may, with boisterous and convincing authority, say otherwise. Every day, even every minute of the day, marks a new opportunity to begin afresh our side of our relationship with the loving God. Despite profoundly difficult circumstances, every moment of life can invite us to turn our gaze back to Christ. If this is the only thing you do, dare to trust and turn the eyes of your deepest heart toward Him—and hold on fast.
With God’s help, all are called to life-giving encounter with Him. Bear in mind that both the preparation and the encounter itself take place solely as a result of His love for each one of us. Although these occur solely by the will of God, our most honest effort is needed. This requires courage, humility, and trust to seek “the one thing necessary.” As a result of this ongoing discipline and dialogue of love, we become more spiritually “supple,” surrendering the immature, yet hardened, self-defeating “chips on our shoulders” that make us sure we know how life “should” treat us. The more supple, humble, and open our hearts are, the more receptive they are to His fashioning them into thrones of rest for His pleasure.
With this in mind, it is high time to put away childish things! Pursuing the love of God and neighbor, in other words, the “Other,” may have more in store for each of us than we could ever have imagined. It is vital to remain open to the possibility that our entire universe could change at a moment’s notice as a result of the love of God.
Second, look to my example and to the example of all of the saints. Learn from us! Turn to us! Even from these reflections offered to you concerning the lives of Fr. Zossimas and me, bear witness that we are only two from among a whole “cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1). Our examples are as varied and plentiful as the stars in the heavens. Despite countless personal differences, we testify in unison that no obstacle can keep us from the love of the living God. Although most people today may not be called to ascetic solitude, everyone is called to the life-giving journey.
Third, ask for help. Reach out in prayer to God, and do not fear asking for what He takes great pleasure in giving. Do not be shy in reaching out to good and trustworthy persons around you whom God Himself places in your path. Also, as strange as this may sound to many modern ears, do not fear reaching out to your friends who have departed from this life yet are nevertheless very much alive in Christ and abide among His saints. Do not neglect this. Through His merciful love the saints, your friends, are all gathered about you. Your path in this life indeed may not be easy, but you will never be alone. The loving, Triune God is always there.
I must take my leave of you now. I beseech that the love of our living God, thrice-holy, will protect, sustain, and guide you on your journey toward Him. As I leave you, please allow me to offer the gift of these words from another friend of God, who beautifully describes this journey. He bears witness to the following:
REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Reflect on the graphic nature of St. Mary of Egypt’s story during the years before she was healed by God. Discuss how this version of her life affected you.
2. a. What was it like reading how St. Mary became a follower of Christ?
b. Were there places in her story that surprised you?
3. With the above question in mind, could some persons be surprised that she began to notice Christians, even becoming attracted to them, yet at the same time she became much worse in her sin?
a. How does this part of her life strike you?
b. What could this say about people in our own society?
c. What could this say about our own close family members and loved ones?
4. Consider the section of the story in which St. Mary could not enter the church and found herself being “ambushed” by Love.
a. Describe how this part of her spiritual journey touched you.
b. Are there places in our lives where we may need to be “ambushed” by Love today? Discuss this as you are able.
5. What can we learn from the saint’s example of living for so many years in the desert, fighting her inner demons while on her “honeymoon with Christ”?
6. The story later discusses the life of St. Zossimas, a respected spiritual father and abbot, who left the life that he knew so well in search of a spiritual companion to help him with his journey in Christ. What may this have to say to us, adult Christians, today?
7. The meeting of the two ascetics in the desert is deeply touching and even a little humorous. In his humility, and through the wisdom granted to him by God, St. Zossimas seeks out and finally receives St. Mary’s blessing.
a. How does this part of the story touch you and your experience within the life of the Church?
b. St. Mary’s love, humility, and spiritual authority is sought after and recognized by St. Zossimas. Could there be other women saints in our midst, or at least potential saints in the making, who may prove to be resources of love, humility, and spiritual benefit for others? If so, where are they? How may we as members of the Church be accountable to them?
c. What would the Lord have us do?
8.a. Discuss how your understanding of the saints may have changed as a result of reading this (and other) chapters.
b. If we were to turn to the saints as our friends who are alive in Christ right now, surrounding us (cf. Heb 12:1) on a daily basis, how could this impact our lives? Discuss this.
by Presbytera Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald
(FitzGerald, Kyriaki Karidoyanes. "Healing the Unspeakable: The Life of Saint Mary of Egypt" in "Encountering Women of Faith: The St. Catherine's Vision Collection, Volume 2" Edited by Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2011) 173-194.)
"The power of Your Cross, O Christ, has worked wonders,
for even the woman who was once a harlot
chose to follow the ascetic way.
Casting aside her weakness, bravely she opposed the devil;
and having gained the prize of victory,
she now intercedes for our souls."
+ Adapted slightly from the “Canon of St. Mary of Egypt,” in The Lenten Triodion,
trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber and Faber, 1978), 448.
Introduction
St. Mary of Egypt is remembered annually by Eastern Orthodox Christians on the fifth Sunday of Great Lent. It is no coincidence that the Orthodox liturgical calendar brings her life into particular focus during this special season. As we prepare for celebrating the Lord’s Resurrection at Pascha (Easter), we are encouraged to reflect more deeply upon our relationship with God, neighbor, our own selves, and creation in order to bring our lives more in line with the gospel and the will of God for us.
Her life story, in particular, is an invitation for repentance and healing because she survived a profoundly difficult life. Many practicing Christians would be scandalized to know that this St. Mary led a life of extreme debauchery, aggressively selling her services as a prostitute for many years. Some would even use the old movie designation of “X-rated” to describe her and her exploits. She was X-rated due to her sexual practices. She was X-rated due to her willful, callous connection with others. And she was X-rated due to the way others in return had dehumanized her in their minds and hearts.Because of these extreme and perilous dimensions of her life, more than one sermon about her over the years has left me feeling uneasy, even cold, because of the perspective of the speaker. All too often, there seemed to be more of a titillating focus on Mary’s early life than appreciation for the arduous journey of a human person starting from virtually unspeakable circumstances. There seemed to be little recognition that as a result of experiencing profound forgiveness, healing, and transformation, St. Mary of Egypt became an emissary of God, serving as a provocative witness to His endless mercy, love, and joy for others.
The Tradition of the Church records her life in a disturbing and graphic manner. My portrayal in this chapter is perhaps less graphic than what has been written in some liturgical and historical texts. (For a brief, yet excellent, study on this saint, see Benedicta Ward, Harlots of the Desert: A Study in Repentance in Early Monastic Sources (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1987), 26-56. See also the related chapter in this volume, “St. Mary of Egypt: A Provocateur of Parrhesia” by Iulia Corduneanu Curtright.) St. Mary of Egypt was restored to health from a chaotic and loveless existence that could be called a living death; furthermore, she was changed in ways that many of us today would never even imagine.
Over the course of many years, the study of the life of St. Mary of Egypt was one to which I would return. With each attempt to engage her life, I found that cumulative experience from the private, vocational, and professional dimensions of my life all contributed to obtaining a richer appreciation, as well as sparking new questions. Partly because of things that affected my life, her story became more compelling every time I would “visit” with her in the presence of God during the past twenty years.
In the last few decades, more than any other time in living memory, science has begun to scrutinize the ways that people are impacted by rejection, abuse, and trauma, in the family and elsewhere. I have had the privilege to study and receive clinical training regarding these issues. I have also enjoyed the honor of working closely with a number of great and inspiring people who have survived various types of abandonment, maltreatment, and trauma. The images of abuse survival in my depiction of St. Mary’s early life are expressed truthfully, yet conservatively. In other words, whatever really happened to her that led her to a life of such gross abasement of self and others was probably worse than the circumstances described in this chapter.
The account I am about to share is written as if Mary entered my office, sat down before me, and began to speak. I find myself seeking the mercy and help of the Lord, as well as asking for the saint’s direction and entreating you, the reader, for your patience and forgiveness as I dare to share her story with you in the first person.
+ PART ONE +
My name is Mary. I lived during the fifth century and was born not too far from the illustrious city of Alexandria in Egypt. My early life is not much to write about. In fact, there is not much about my childhood in surviving historical documents. But what I can tell you is that my family life was far from happy. When I grew up I ran away from home and headed straight for the great city, so that I could begin building a better life for myself. I was twelve years old.
You may wonder, “What would cause a twelve-year-old child of that era to run away from home?” By looking into the next phase of my life, you may obtain some insight into this. You will notice that at twelve, I ran toward a life of squalor, depravity, and gross sexual misconduct. For the next seventeen years, I was a prostitute. I sold my body indiscriminately and as often as I could, to anyone who interested me. I was particularly famous for my sarcastic wit and aggressive exploits in tracking down my patrons. I mocked them mercilessly, and I sometimes even stalked them down, not unlike wild game. I remember, especially, the sour disgust and contempt I felt toward them, even as I desperately chased after their caresses. These extremes did not faze me. Deep within me I felt nothing. I felt dead.
For the sake of decorum, I will not divulge too many details about how abysmal my life became. Bear in mind, however, that some Church historians have been honest enough to record that I would have performed my sexual favors “on the house,” so to speak—gratis, nada, free of charge! There were times when I performed these acts simply for the thrill. Yes, these Church historians were correct in their portrayal.
Please consider how this could be so, as my biographers in centuries past did not. My behavior is not unusual for children who grow up in an atmosphere of overwhelming, ongoing unreliability. From my earliest days, there was a dearth of authentic human connection and safety to direct my path. I lived in an environment where inconsistencies and abuse abounded, including sexual abuse. Rather than being tenderly guided and cherished by emotionally healthy parents, I was progressively neglected and devalued. Rather than being seen as a beloved daughter of God, I became invisible. I was treated like an object, a worthless commodity. I was used to satisfy my pitiful father’s whims and business dealings.
Many survivors of abuse, including sexual abuse, do not grow up to become abusers of others, as I did. In fact, many persons experience healing and transcend very difficult childhood histories, leading to wonderful and fruitful lives, praise God! Nevertheless, we must bear in mind that when certain powerful, life-effacing circumstances are right, it is not uncommon for people to lash out in the only way they know how: targeting themselves and others. This is partially because most of the abuse they survive occurs in secret. Acts of neglect and abandonment, lack of concern for safety, weak interpersonal connections demonstrating a failure of trustworthy, mutual love, even psychological intimidation and oppression, happen unseen. The casual observer is usually oblivious to this powerful “anti-gospel” (or kakovagelion, in Greek) reigning within the life of the family. Perpetrators, knowingly or not, are conveying stunning contempt for the mystery of the human person, created in the “image and likeness of God.”
When the needed healing does not occur, children may seek restitution for their indescribable loss by acting out the abuse anew in their adult lives. This may be their only way to experience some form of connection, even if “connecting” means passing on to others what was done to them in the past. Acting out in this manner was the only way I felt alive...and home is where it all started.
After I left home, I had no family, ho friends, and no hope. It did not even dawn on me that I needed to save for the future, let alone invest my money in order to prepare for it. I just barely subsisted by using my street smarts and whatever my body could get for me. In a deep sense I was continuing the same pattern of abuse perpetrated against me. I was only fooling myself in thinking that at least I was free finally, living on "my terms.”
This extreme manner of trying to feel alive served me poorly and was only a temporary means of relief. Like one who misuses a medication or alcohol to numb pain, I would soon enough wake up and return to my senses, finding myself back in the same cold, empty and flat existence called “my life.” Yes, mine is an extreme yet genuine example of someone running away from home in search of the “geographical cure.” I was too fragile and afraid to ask the difficult, brutally honest questions, the questions inviting me to examine what really went wrong in my life. For many of these later years, I may have helped contribute to my own problems. This is because wherever I went, I still had to face myself.
After about seventeen years of living this way, my routine had begun to feel very old. Like an alcoholic or a drug or sex addict who knows he or she can no longer continue in the same way, I was desperate for a change, only there was none in sight. I did not even have the language or the thought forms in my mind to conceptualize the possibility that things could be different. All I knew was that I was growing increasingly uncomfortable living in my own skin and I could no longer bear it. But there was no way I could admit this to myself. So, I continued in my familiar, miserable way of living.
During this time, I caught myself paying attention to a growing group of people in the illustrious city of Alexandria. They seemed to treat each other and their neighbors differently from the way others did. They were called “Christians.” Even while on the job, I managed to study them from afar for some time. They behaved with unusual humility and kindness, addressing each other often as “brother” or “sister,” "mother" or "father,” when they were not even related! I found this very odd, because the few blood relatives I knew never treated anyone with such attention and gentleness.
These Christians were consistent, too! They did not employ the “double-speak” so easily mouthed by the movers and shakers of my society. Their “yes” was “yes” and their "no” truly was “no.” They were even merciful to strangers. Although I had trapped numerous weaker members of their fellowship in my bed, there were still many among them I could not ensnare, and I never could quite figure out why. Some of these people, even knowing who I was, treated me kindly. This really confused me.
Yes, by now I was “damaged goods” in the extreme. Even in today’s better circumstances, persons like me often do not live to a very old age. Beginning in childhood, the inner ravages of mistreatment and neglect perpetrated on the soul and body may extract their toll in numerous ways. These extreme and painful circumstances of childhood are often at the root of serious physical illnesses, which may develop later on in adult life. This sad fact, especially in recent years, has been repeatedly documented through the explosion of clinical research examining the effects of trauma, abandonment, and abuse.
My life was certainly a living death. I could not grow as a person because I was never engaged consistently with love by another human being. I could not grow in the “image and likeness of God” in which I was created because no one was there to convey the love of the living God to me. Even now, to say this to you causes me to twinge in pain. God abhors the abuse of all His children!
Our loving God profoundly understands that many of these, His beautiful creations from desperate backgrounds, could not come to know Him during their earthly lives. My story is all the more incredible, for I certainly “beat the odds” for children who find themselves in my kind of situation. But there was much suffering before the story reached its conclusion. The unbearably heavy boredom of my bleak and meaningless life led me to follow, even stalk, Christians more closely...and, oh my, I am now embarrassed to say, I really did begin to annoy them.
One day, as I was amusing myself by watching from afar the movements of a group of Christian men from Egypt and Libya, I realized they were preparing to board a ship heading for Jerusalem to celebrate the solemn feast day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Brazen as I was, I wanted to go as well, thinking that any change would be an entertaining distraction. Surely, there would be plenty of customers on board and in the city of Jerusalem, once the ship arrived there. Sarcastic and persistent, I harassed the poor fellows so much that they finally snuck me on board. On the ship I continued my old practices. In fact, I was virtually insatiable. I enticed, seduced, even coerced the unwilling...as many as I could, to lie with me. A desperate gnawing, a hunger that some would even call insane, exploded deep within me. I would do anything not to face it.
More than ever before, I gave my body away. But the more I tried to give myself away through each sexual exploit, the emptier and more dead I felt afterward. No matter how much I tried to distract myself from the blight of my existence, it seemed to return to me with compounded interest. And so I kept performing the only “work” I ever knew at this literally unstoppable pace.
I can only attribute the fact that God did not deal with me then to His ineffable mercy and loving-kindness. He knew everything I was feeling and thinking. He knew, especially, how utterly void and dead I felt inside. I learned only later that sometimes, before a person “bottoms out” preceding a crisis that leads to healing from a life of sin, addiction, and/or compulsive behaviors, that person’s behavior may change for the worse — sometimes, much worse — before it becomes better. (Often placing others and ourselves in the way of far more danger, as well! Tragically, countless souls have never succeeded in passing through this stage of acting out. These lives now rest in the loving hands of the living God.) This was true, at least, for me. That God was able to love me even during this, the lowest point in my life, still overwhelms me and brings me to tears. I was hardened, dead, and extremely cynical. At age twenty-nine, I was old and at the very end of my game.
Finally we reached Jerusalem. I was able to follow the crowds as they prepared for the liturgical celebration. Even then, I was actively engaged in the only profession I ever knew, watching from a distance as the ecclesial events progressed, while seeking the amorous affections and downfall of my next client.
I share these details with you not so much to shock you, but to show you how any person, no matter how internally lifeless he or she may be, as I was, can be brought to an encounter with the loving God Himself. Please bear this in mind.
The Lord Jesus came to the world proclaiming that the love of God is already with us, as He inaugurated the Kingdom through His Person. All God asks of us is to repent. Repentance, as I am sure you already know, refers to the Greek word metanoia. This word means a radical change of mind and heart; it is a transformation of the human person’s nous.
And although nous is usually translated from biblical Greek as “mind” or “intelligence,” its fullest meaning points to its Semitic roots. These roots refer to the depth of our souls, the place of “the mind in the heart,” which lies at the foundation of our being. It is in this place that what we value most deeply and who we are come together, for “where your treasure is, there your heart lies also” (Matt 6:21). A number of holy lovers of God (that is, saints) have even sometimes identified the nous with the “heart” or “core” of a person. (See Kyriaki FitzGerald and Thomas FitzGerald, Living the Beatitudes: Perspectives from Orthodox Spirituality (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006), 219-58)
From the secret recesses of our depths, God calls us to turn to Him, as He is our Source and the Author of life. The more we turn away from the Truth, from the loving God, the more we throw ourselves into our own self-absorbed darkness. And without this true Light, left to our own devices, we so easily mistake our darkness for light (cf. Matt 6:23). This is precisely what happened to me. The “light” and “life” I was chasing through all of my existence was actually my own finite, ego-based, self-absorbed, inner darkness. It was a living death, and I didn’t even know it.
Even at this point in my story, I was brazenly managing my craft, but somehow I still kept following the pilgrims to the courtyard of the cathedral, and from there I watched. At daybreak I saw throngs of pilgrims entering the cathedral to venerate a portion of our Lord’s Holy Cross that had been brought out for that special day. Intrigued, I blended into the middle of the crowd so that I could enter and see what was taking place.
But as I reached the threshold of the entryway, I was thrown back. Not even thinking twice about it, I tried a second time...a third time...even a fourth time. Each time I struggled to sneak into the church, it felt as if powerful sentries would block my way. The force was so strong that I felt bruised and beaten up. For quite some time I was utterly broken and transfixed.
Suddenly, in a moment of clarity, I realized that in no way was I pure enough to enter this gateway. Yes, by purity I do mean my sinfulness, my profoundly hardened, cynical existence, and the way I treated my life and my body, as well as the lives and bodies of many others: like garbage. But I mean far more here.
I am pointing to the Greek word “parthenia,” which is often translated into English as “virginity.” “Parthenia” and “virginity” do indicate an unconditional physical abstinence from sexual relations. But “parthenia” refers first of all to our purity of heart in the presence of God. This is a foundation of radical integrity, and it is unconditional; it takes hold from the inside out. This integrity refers to our personal unconditional surrender, from the very depths of our being, to the life and love of the living God. Being “pure” in this way grounds us in Reality, which is our abiding in the presence of the living God of absolute love. This is truly how Christians traditionally experience and approach reality.(For more on this issue, see my Persons in Communion: A Theology of Authentic Relationships (Berkeley, CA: InterOrthodox Press, 2006)).
And my life was so far from this! I realized all of this as I was standing there, transfixed at the threshold of the church. I had hit bottom. I recognized the fact that I was an utter counterfeit in the way I lived my life. It was not based in Reality. I had become so accustomed to turning my face away from Truth that I needed help from beyond me just to become honest with myself. I needed help from beyond my experience of the world in order to face the depths of despair in which I had been living all these years. And help did finally come.
There, in that instant, I noticed the beautiful icon of our Lady, Mary, the Mother of our Lord and God. From the bits and pieces of stories I had managed to glean during the previous months, I knew who she was. She was so beautiful! As I gazed upon her, it seemed that I felt for the very first time in my life the indescribable, sweet purity of a Mother’s love.
She seemed to hold me there—yes, even cradle me—in the depths of her loving gaze. I felt as if she could see right through me. The entire area between us was flooded with Light beyond description. The crowds of pilgrims seemed to fall far away into the background. It was as if only she and I were there together. This Light penetrated my own being and somehow, with an ability that did not originate from me, I drank this in. I was not unlike a famished baby nursing, gratefully, with adult tears in her eyes, at her Mother’s breast. Please believe me, my brothers and sisters, that I had never, ever experienced a Mother’s unconditional love until then.
I do not know how much time passed. No words were exchanged. Only ineffable relief and love were communicated. Finally, when it seemed that I had fed enough on this inexpressible, life-giving sweetness, I began to come to my senses for the very first time.
At that point, I cried out to her, “Help me, beloved Mother. I am unworthy of entering this sacred place. Only now do I realize why I have not been able to enter. Uphold me, embrace me and help me! Help me to enter, and I will do whatever you instruct me to do. I desire True Life. I will listen and obey you, O Beautiful Mother of our God, with a grateful and happy heart even as the very least of your children.”
A weight of unspeakable proportions had been lifted from me. The dark and ominous cloud of doom evaporated in that very moment. Because of this Mother’s love, I was no longer alone, trapped, or, rather, frozen in the chaotic darkness of my own finitude, cut off from true connection with others, as well as from the loving, thrice-holy God Himself.
This cleansing and healing offered me relief and joy. And this joy spawned a new, deep inner urgency to proceed more deeply into the church so that I, too, might venerate our Lord’s Precious and Holy Cross. This newborn connection with our Beautiful Mother made my initial baby steps toward Christ seem effortless. Even though the edifice was noisy and crowded, I walked peacefully. In a way that cannot be described, it felt as if I was being physically drawn in by Love, and that I was finally home. Do not underestimate what the power and love of God can do for the healing and transformation of human souls!
At this point, not unlike the many throngs of pious pilgrims, I, too, was permitted the gift of falling down in utter thanksgiving and joy, to pray before the Cross of her Son and our Lord. And when I did, in that one instant, I was ambushed—again—by the indefinable divine sweetness! Dazed and overwhelmed, this time I was caught up in the sublime mystery of Life and Love eternal, bestowed upon all of fallen creation through this piece of Wood. Heaven and earth would never be the same, and neither would I.
I worshipped our loving Lord at the foot of His Precious Cross for the first time that day. With all of my heart, I did not want this to end. Turning to her, I opened my heart to my and our loving Mother and Intercessor. In that moment, I heard with my spirit and ears: “If you cross over the Jordan, you will find rest.”
Immediately, I perceived what this meant. I left the church then, at about 9:00 a.m. Out of the blue, in the courtyard a kind stranger appeared and out of pity gave me three small coins, with which I bought three loaves of bread. This was a surprise blessing from God for my journey! With these three loaves under my arm, I set off on my way, and by sunset I had arrived at the Church of St. John the Baptist by the Jordan River. It was there that I was baptized and received the sacrament of Holy Communion for the first time. In retrospect, I recognize that at this moment, the first half of my life’s journey had been fulfilled.
On the next day, I passed to the other side of the Jordan, and there I prayed again to our Beautiful Mother and Intercessor. I asked, I implored her to direct me to go wherever it pleased her Son, and our life-giving God, to send me. And indeed, I was led on a very long journey through the desert, where eventually I came to a small cave that would be my cell for the next forty-seven years.
The Truth urges me on to tell you two more things about my life. First of all, this next very long period of my life became my honeymoon, so to speak, with Christ. I came to know Him and depend upon Him in the daily spiritual and physical struggles of the desert. By getting to know Him, I also came to become more fully the person God had intended me to be.
But just as in any marital honeymoon, difficulties arose. These difficulties were not the fault of my Beloved and Divine Bridegroom, but of fallen, earthbound, and unworthy me. The battle of getting to know myself, growing in the manner God intended, was coming.
Yes, the floodgates of love and paradise had been opened to me. Nevertheless, my accepting and trusting the ever-present Light, Love, and Person of our Lord in the unknown depths and secret recesses of my soul was still a work in progress. Gently, ever so gently, through the extremes of Jordanian sun and cold, He healed the damage caused by a lifetime of sin, despair, and abuse. Of course, this took much time and effort on my part. Since the Church’s foundation many have received this divine gift of quiet struggle and ongoing healing. It is a gift based on the fact that God loves us first. He is always the one who reaches out to us, even if it seems to us on our finite human level that we are the ones initiating the contact.
Once we experience the gift of this loving connection, we also receive a second gift of sorts. After we taste the refreshment of our Lord’s sweetness, we begin to obtain a greater sense of how altogether unprepared we are for the visitation of the all-loving God. We notice more and more our own inner cobwebs, which were invisible to us before because of the lack of Light. And so in the following years, over and over again, I had the privilege of facing all of the demons that diverted and prevented my heart, soul, and mind from experiencing the love of the living God — in other words, from experiencing Reality. This inner hardness had also kept me from discovering my true identity as a unique and cherished child of God.
The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, graciously has refrained from recording what these specific personal demons, difficulties, and challenges were, as a way to protect my privacy. But the general categories have been recorded, and even these indicate that they were “legion.” Some of them spewed loathsome, self-condemning, and life-effacing messages toward me, toward others, and sometimes toward both. These demons very successfully distracted me from seeking the “one thing necessary” (Luke 10:42) and helped deaden me in many ways. During those early days of my lackluster life, I had tried to feel alive and sometimes even thought I was alive, but I truly did not know what life was, until Life tackled me.
Cradled in the arms of the living God of love, a new journey began both in my heart and in the safe confines of the Jordanian desert. What a surprise! Slowly, ever so slowly, I was changing as a result of His tender loving-kindness. This was almost as marvelous a discovery as the initial encounter with God Himself—namely, to realize with every fiber of my being that I, too, unworthy as I was, had been created for the love of the living God, by this same loving God whose love saturates and contains all of creation.
+ PART TWO +
At this point, brothers and sisters, I am compelled to go on with my story. I will now go out on a limb with you and reveal something that it was not my original intention to share. Circumstances beyond my control have obliged me to reveal this part of the story. Some may say that I have saved the best, or most amazing witness, for last.
I lived a solitary life of prayer in the desert all of those forty-seven years. Some who have met me before you have wondered and asked how the Church ever came to know about my life. This is a good question. Surely, my life would never have become known if it was not God’s pleasure to reveal it to you. But this next part of the story teaches us much about faith, courage, and integrity, though not my own.
Forty-six years into my honeymoon with Christ, I was “found,” or “discovered,” so to speak, by the holy presbyter-monk Zossimas. He also became my friend, pastor, and confessor. It is he who heard me confess my life story, recorded it, and eventually shared it with the world, reflecting God’s pleasure. I would like to tell you more about him now, and will try to do so as if I were a third person, an observer.
Before he met me, Fr. Zossimas had been serving as the abbot and spiritual father of a large monastic community for men in Palestine. At the opposite end of life experience when compared to mine, he grew up in safety and in the bosom of the Church. From the time he was a toddler, he was raised in the same Christian monastery. This reflects an ancient Christian custom, dating back to the early Church, of dedicating at least one child in a Christian family to monastic and/or ordained service in the Church. This custom is still practiced in parts of the ancient Orthodox Christian world even now, particularly in the Middle East, Africa, and many parts of Greece.
From the very beginning of his life in the monastery, Zossimas demonstrated great love for monastic life and excelled quickly in every known ascetic discipline. As he grew into adulthood, through no effort of self-promotion, he earned a reputation as the “perfect” monk. He had become so well respected for his rigorous discipline and ability to offend no one that monks from his own community, as well as others living at a distance, sought his spiritual direction.
At the heart of his discipline was his fervent desire to achieve “purity of heart.” This is a response to the Lord’s teaching found in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt 5:8). As I mentioned earlier, “purity of heart” refers to a kind of unconditional integrity in our relationship with God. It is the foundation of holiness. Through “purity of heart” our self-centeredness and sins no longer cloud our vision, allowing us to perceive and respond in truth to God. This seems, and indeed is, impossible for human beings to achieve, but as Christians we believe that “all things are possible with God” (Matt 19:26; Mark 10:27).
Throughout the Christianized Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire), numerous monasteries had been established in the larger cities. As early as the fifth century, being abbot of a large monastic community was a highly respected ecclesial vocation. By the time Zossimas was in his mid-fifties, he had already been serving within his monastery as abbot and spiritual father for many years. He was “at the top of his game.” He accepted his responsibilities without complaint, aware and appreciative of the many gifts God had given him, and respected the confidences of his fellow monks. But he was also aware that, according to everything he knew, he had achieved all there was to achieve in the monastic life.
As this awareness grew, he started to feel a kind of spiritual uneasiness, even psychological anxiety. As much as he profoundly loved his spiritual sons and brothers in the monastery, he began to be assailed by disturbing thoughts and feelings, wondering, in effect, “Is this all that faithful discipline brings?” or “Is this everything?”
In time he came to appreciate that these were important questions; the disturbing concerns were the product of a growing relationship with God. As he considered them, he realized that even though he was a spiritual father, he, too, needed spiritual direction. He, too, needed the guidance of someone more spiritually mature.
He began to ask more probing and courageous self-searching questions: “Is there anyone out there who can help me?” “Is there anyone who could serve as my spiritual guide and teacher, and as intercessor to God on my behalf?” “How do I go about searching for this person?” He began to feel some hope when the thought occurred to him that the loving God was near and always ready to help. So he began more earnestly to pray and fast about this, asking God to help him discern what to do next.
During prayer, as he was yet again deeply considering what to do next, he saw a man standing before him who told him, “Indeed, Zossimas, you have gone far in your monastic effort, but your life here has taken you as far as it can. If you truly desire to know more, to know God Himself, you must learn from the example set by Abraham. Leave the comfort and familiarity of your father’s house and seek God in foreign terrain. Go to the monastery that is located near the Jordan River.” ("Harlots of the Desert" by Benidicta Ward offers a more detailed, beautiful rendition of this encounter, directly translating patristic texts; see 37-38.) This was a difficult directive for Zossimas to hear, as he had never left his monastery before. Nevertheless, he left immediately for the River Jordan and eventually found the monastery, even though it was in such an obscure location that most monks in the region did not know about it. Truly, his being able to find this community reflects the desire of God for his growth and salvation.
Zossimas was a bit of an enigma to the abbot and the brothers there. They realized that he was no foreigner to the spiritual life, yet he refused to identify himself to them fully. To the abbot he said, “I have heard about your monastery, that your community’s life helps one grow in an intimate relationship with Christ our God. I wish to seek our Lord here if you will give your blessing, Father.” The wise abbot reminded Zossimas that it is God who heals and restores our relationship with Him, and welcomed him into the brotherhood, though he still had not fully disclosed who he was.
Zossimas soon came to admire the level of spiritual experience and discipline of his new brothers. Above all things they sought to know and grow in Christ. For the first time in what seemed a very long time, Zossimas was happy. Released from the constrictions of his previous responsibilities, he found it an honor and joy to be in the company of such spiritually mature persons, all seeking together the “one thing necessary.” He certainly had nothing new to teach them. He was edified by their example and inspired to strive all the more earnestly to know God.
There was one aspect of the monastery’s discipline with which Zossimas was unfamiliar. This was their most important spiritual rule. On the Sunday that initiates Great Lent, all of the brothers would gather together after the celebration of the Liturgy. They ate one last simple meal, privately collected whatever provisions they each deemed necessary, and gave each other a farewell embrace. Then, each of them crossed the Jordan River, heading for the desert, in order to begin his personal Lenten vigil. At the heart of this rule was a rigorous silence. They separated from one another during this time as a way to safeguard the privacy of every brother’s prayer and fasting discipline. They did not want to be a source of comparison, scandal, or temptation to each other.
Except for one or two priest-monks who stayed behind to conduct services, the monks remained in the desert, fasting and praying, and returned six weeks later to celebrate together the feast of Palm Sunday. Zossimas enthusiastically looked forward to following this discipline. And as he set out on this arduous desert journey, he noticed that the desire to receive a blessing from a holy person of God returned to him, stronger than ever before. A deep longing originating from the depths of his soul urged him to travel further and further, deeper and deeper, into the desert.
“Perhaps now,” he thought, “God will bless me with meeting the spiritual father from whom I have so long desired to receive a blessing.” He felt an almost palpable expectation that this beloved person was close at hand, somehow.
For twenty days he prayed and walked. During his journey he saw no one, not an animal or a bird or even the shadow of one. This absence of encounters fed his strange sense of joyful, palpable expectation, a feeling that never left him. Then at about noon on the twentieth day, facing east and nearing the end of his noonday prayers, he thought he saw with his peripheral vision the outline or shadow of a human being darting about among the large boulders. Fearing that this could be some kind of malevolent spirit, he made the sign of the cross and finished his prayers.
His prayers completed, he looked back and realized that he did see something, or, rather, someone. It was an old woman, with skin scorched black by the sun, and short, wooly white hair. She was completely and utterly naked. Zossimas leaped for joy at the sight of her! Yes, I am referring to myself here. It is awkward speaking to you about myself in the third person. But, who else but the loving God could direct a person to the very relationship he or she needed in the middle of nowhere? Forgetting his age and exhaustion, Zossimas began to chase me. “Please, stop, let me meet you!” he shouted. “Grant me, an old man, a prayer and a blessing for the sake of God, who despises no one!” he cried. (Cf. Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 40-44.) But despite his tears and imploring, I kept eluding him. At this point in our stories, both figuratively and literally, I was vulnerable and exposed in new ways!
After what turned out to be a long chase in the midday desert sun, Zossimas could go no further. He was unable to run any more, and stopped in what seemed to be the middle of a dry riverbed. I raced up an embankment and hid behind a large rock. Zossimas burst into tears, grieving over this lost opportunity. The sounds of his weeping broke my heart.
As he wept, I could not bear watching him in pain, so I called out to him, “Father Zossimas, please forgive me, as I am a sinful woman, naked and unable to face you for reasons of decency. Grant, I beg you, the prayer of this sinful woman and toss me your outer cloak, so that I may cover my weakness and turn to you and receive your blessing.” (Cf. Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 40-44.)
Zossimas seemed to tremble as he heard my voice. God granted him the ability to sense that I knew who he was. Through the eyes of our tender-hearted God, I saw him. He realized that this could only have been revealed through the Holy Spirit. He finally found the humble servant of God for whom he had been waiting all this time.
Taking off his faded, tattered cloak, he tossed it over to me and turned his back. A minute later I approached him and asked, “Why is it that you have come all this way, Father? Why do you wish to see such a sinful woman as me? You have gone through so much trouble; what could I possibly have to offer you?”
For some reason, my addressing him in this manner frightened Fr. Zossimas, and he knelt down in the sand, bowed low, and asked me for a blessing, saying the customary, “Eulogeite!” (“Bless!”). He did not dare to look up at this point. This scene overwhelmed me, and I, too, knelt down in the sand, bowed low to him, and asked him for his blessing, also saying the customary, “Eulogeite” And so there we were, two aged adults, prostrating before each other in the hot desert sand.
“Eulogeite!" “Eulogeite!” “Eulogeite!” “Eulogeite!” We remained on the ground asking one another for a blessing, several times. This scene must have seemed funny to everyone in heaven, but I feel sure God warmly received our actions, pleased by the sweetness of the tender love and humility expressed by each toward the other.
After what must have been a very long time, I insisted that Zossimas offer his blessing to me, reminding him that “it is only proper for you to give your blessing to me, as you serve our gracious God through the dignity of the priestly office. For many years you have served Him faithfully at His holy table and offered the sacrifice of Christ.” (Cf. Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 40-44.)
For some reason, this seemed to cause Zossimas to panic. His heart raced, and he began to perspire. With great difficulty he was able to say, “O mother in the Spirit, it is plain from this insight that all of your life you have dwelt with God and have nearly died to the world. It is plain above all that grace is given you, because you called me by my name and recognized me as a priest, although you have never seen me before. But because grace is recognized not by office, but by gifts of the Spirit, bless me, for God’s sake, and pray for me out of the kindness of your heart.” Overwhelmed by his love, I gave in to the plea of this deeply cherished man of God and said, “Blessed is God, who cares for the salvation of souls,” and he responded with, “Amen.” (Cf. Ward, Harlots of the Desert, 40-44.) We then helped one another up, sore knees and all, and found a more shady and suitable location to talk. Together we prayed and shared our stories.
This story recorded by Fr. Zossimas is about how repentance affected the two of us. There is more to the story, but suffice it to say that he offered me the precious Body and Blood of our Lord, and later, with the help of God, he also buried my body after I had departed this world. The Lord blessed him with a very long and happy life as a monk at the monastery by the River Jordan. He died peacefully at one hundred years of age.
I share this part of the story as an act of respect to those who asked in the past, “How did the Church ever come to know you?” Surely, as many in the world have now become acquainted with both our stories, it is of the will of God.
+ + +
Allow me to end this visit by sharing three important lessons that I learned during my forty-seven-year honeymoon with Christ. Perhaps you will consider packing these along with you, like the surprise gift of three loaves I received as I set out for the Jordan, as you proceed with your own spiritual journey.
First of all, know that the loving God has never ceased loving you. Do not be fooled by other voices that may, with boisterous and convincing authority, say otherwise. Every day, even every minute of the day, marks a new opportunity to begin afresh our side of our relationship with the loving God. Despite profoundly difficult circumstances, every moment of life can invite us to turn our gaze back to Christ. If this is the only thing you do, dare to trust and turn the eyes of your deepest heart toward Him—and hold on fast.
With God’s help, all are called to life-giving encounter with Him. Bear in mind that both the preparation and the encounter itself take place solely as a result of His love for each one of us. Although these occur solely by the will of God, our most honest effort is needed. This requires courage, humility, and trust to seek “the one thing necessary.” As a result of this ongoing discipline and dialogue of love, we become more spiritually “supple,” surrendering the immature, yet hardened, self-defeating “chips on our shoulders” that make us sure we know how life “should” treat us. The more supple, humble, and open our hearts are, the more receptive they are to His fashioning them into thrones of rest for His pleasure.
With this in mind, it is high time to put away childish things! Pursuing the love of God and neighbor, in other words, the “Other,” may have more in store for each of us than we could ever have imagined. It is vital to remain open to the possibility that our entire universe could change at a moment’s notice as a result of the love of God.
Second, look to my example and to the example of all of the saints. Learn from us! Turn to us! Even from these reflections offered to you concerning the lives of Fr. Zossimas and me, bear witness that we are only two from among a whole “cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1). Our examples are as varied and plentiful as the stars in the heavens. Despite countless personal differences, we testify in unison that no obstacle can keep us from the love of the living God. Although most people today may not be called to ascetic solitude, everyone is called to the life-giving journey.
Third, ask for help. Reach out in prayer to God, and do not fear asking for what He takes great pleasure in giving. Do not be shy in reaching out to good and trustworthy persons around you whom God Himself places in your path. Also, as strange as this may sound to many modern ears, do not fear reaching out to your friends who have departed from this life yet are nevertheless very much alive in Christ and abide among His saints. Do not neglect this. Through His merciful love the saints, your friends, are all gathered about you. Your path in this life indeed may not be easy, but you will never be alone. The loving, Triune God is always there.
I must take my leave of you now. I beseech that the love of our living God, thrice-holy, will protect, sustain, and guide you on your journey toward Him. As I leave you, please allow me to offer the gift of these words from another friend of God, who beautifully describes this journey. He bears witness to the following:
Christ gives to human persons life and growth, nourishment and light and breath.
He opens their eyes and gives them light and the power to see.
He gives to human persons the bread of life, and this bread is nothing else than Himself.
He is life for those who are living and a sweet scent for those who breathe.
He clothes those who desire to be clothed.
He strengthens the traveler, and He is the way.
He is at once both the inn along the road and the destination of the journey. . .
When we struggle, He struggles at our side.
When we argue, He is the reconciler.
And when we win the victory, He is the Prize.
(St. Nicholas Cabasilas, 14th c.) (From The Life in Christ 1.4, adapted.)
REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Reflect on the graphic nature of St. Mary of Egypt’s story during the years before she was healed by God. Discuss how this version of her life affected you.
2. a. What was it like reading how St. Mary became a follower of Christ?
b. Were there places in her story that surprised you?
3. With the above question in mind, could some persons be surprised that she began to notice Christians, even becoming attracted to them, yet at the same time she became much worse in her sin?
a. How does this part of her life strike you?
b. What could this say about people in our own society?
c. What could this say about our own close family members and loved ones?
4. Consider the section of the story in which St. Mary could not enter the church and found herself being “ambushed” by Love.
a. Describe how this part of her spiritual journey touched you.
b. Are there places in our lives where we may need to be “ambushed” by Love today? Discuss this as you are able.
5. What can we learn from the saint’s example of living for so many years in the desert, fighting her inner demons while on her “honeymoon with Christ”?
6. The story later discusses the life of St. Zossimas, a respected spiritual father and abbot, who left the life that he knew so well in search of a spiritual companion to help him with his journey in Christ. What may this have to say to us, adult Christians, today?
7. The meeting of the two ascetics in the desert is deeply touching and even a little humorous. In his humility, and through the wisdom granted to him by God, St. Zossimas seeks out and finally receives St. Mary’s blessing.
a. How does this part of the story touch you and your experience within the life of the Church?
b. St. Mary’s love, humility, and spiritual authority is sought after and recognized by St. Zossimas. Could there be other women saints in our midst, or at least potential saints in the making, who may prove to be resources of love, humility, and spiritual benefit for others? If so, where are they? How may we as members of the Church be accountable to them?
c. What would the Lord have us do?
8.a. Discuss how your understanding of the saints may have changed as a result of reading this (and other) chapters.
b. If we were to turn to the saints as our friends who are alive in Christ right now, surrounding us (cf. Heb 12:1) on a daily basis, how could this impact our lives? Discuss this.
