St. Mary of Egypt

St. Mary of Egypt was born around 344 AD in Egypt. At age twelve, she ran away from her parents and went to Alexandria, where she lived an immoral life for seventeen years. She was not a prostitute for money but was driven by an insatiable passion for bodily pleasure.

Around 373 AD, she boarded a ship with pilgrims sailing to Jerusalem for the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, when she tried to enter the church to venerate the True Cross, an invisible force repeatedly prevented her from entering. In profound shock, she realized this was because of her sinfulness.

She wept bitterly before an icon of the Virgin Mary in the narthex of the church, asking Our Lady to intercede for her. After praying, she was permitted to enter the church. This experience brought about her complete conversion. She heard a voice directing her to cross the Jordan River into the desert.

Mary spent the next 47 years alone in the desert east of the Jordan River, doing penance for her past sins. She subsisted on what she could find in the desert. The monk Zosimas discovered her there when she was elderly. She asked him to return the following year with Holy Communion for her, which he did, and to return again the year after with a burial cloth.

When Zosimas returned the second time, he found her body lying peacefully, with an inscription in the sand asking him to bury her. A lion appeared and helped him dig her grave. She died around 421 AD, leaving behind her extraordinary witness to God's mercy and the power of repentance.

The feast of St. Mary of Egypt is celebrated on April 2nd in the Roman Catholic Church. In the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, she is also commemorated on the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent, emphasizing her role as a model for the Lenten season of repentance.