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St. Mary of Egypt — The Catholic Saint Who Couldn't Walk Through a Church Door · Everyday Saints: A Catholic Podcast

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  47 years, alone, in the desert, no food beyond what the wilderness itself could offer. No
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  shelter, no other human voice for most of that time. Her clothes rotted off her body. Her
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  hair grew long and turned white under the sun. Her skin darkened and weathered until the monk,
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  who eventually found her, could barely recognize her as a person. She chose this. At 29 years
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  old, after a life most people would call beyond any hope of redemption, she walked into that
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  desert and she did not come back. It started in Alexandria, Egypt, one of the greatest cities
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  in the ancient world, with a 12-year-old girl who ran away from home and decided she was
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  going to live entirely for herself.
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  Hi, my name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday Saints, episode 12. If you have been with
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  us since the beginning, thank you. 12 weeks, 12 saints, and this one may be the most unexpected
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  story I've told yet. If you are new here, welcome to our porch. Stick around. We drop a new saint
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  every Thursday. This is the story of Saint Mary of Egypt. She is honored and celebrated in
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  the Catholic Church. the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Coptic Church, which is the ancient
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  Christian church of Egypt, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Across
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  those three traditions, she is one of the most celebrated saints in Christian history. Here
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  in the West, the US, most Catholics have never heard her name. Well, her name was Mary. She
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  was born sometime in the fifth century. She ran away from home at the age of 12. She spent
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  the next 17 years in Alexandria, living exactly the life you are probably imagining, and she
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  never pretended otherwise. Then, one afternoon, at the door of a church in Jerusalem, something
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  stopped her cold. Not a lock, not a crowd. Something she could not push past or explain. Something
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  that sent her running toward the Jordan River and into the desert. What she became in that
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  desert over the next 47 years is one of the most extraordinary things I have come across.
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  We start in Alexandria, sometime in the fifth or early sixth century. The exact dates are
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  debated, but the broad strokes of her story are consistent across every account that it
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  survives. Alexandria in that era was one of the great cities of the known world. A major
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  Mediterranean port, densely populated, Sophisticated, you had commerce, philosophy, art, religion,
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  poverty, and every kind of pleasure crowded together on the same narrow streets. It was
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  a place where a person could disappear into the noise and live almost any life they choose.
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  Mary ran away from home at the age of 12. She never tells us why in the account that survives,
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  only that she left her parents, went to Alexandria, and began a certain kind of life. In her own
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  words, she was completely consumed by sensual pleasure for the next 17 years, not primarily
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  as a profession driven by desperation or poverty. She is specific about this. She often refused
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  money. She wanted as many men as possible, and she pursued that life with an energy she later
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  described as a kind of fire she could not control. I wanna be careful here. She never sanitized
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  her own story and I will not sanitize it either, but reducing her to a travesty would miss something
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  important. What the accounts consistently describe as a woman of remarkable intensity and will,
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  someone who lived fully and pursued what she wanted without apology. That quality did not
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  disappear after her conversion. It simply went somewhere else. So for 17 years she lived
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  this way and then more or less on a whim, she decided to join a group of pilgrims sailing
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  to Jerusalem for the feast of the exaltation of the Holy Cross. Now, not out of devotion,
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  out of curiosity, and because there were a lot of young men on that boat. Now they are in
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  Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The church built over the traditional site
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  of the crucification and resurrection of Jesus, one of the most sacred places in the Christian
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  world. Mary joined the crowd of pilgrims moving toward the entrance. She had no particular
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  spiritual agenda. She was just curious the way a tourist is curious. She moved with the crowd
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  toward the door and she could not enter. The door was not locked. There was no physical
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  barrier. She could see other people walking through without difficulty. She simply could
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  not make herself cross the threshold. She later described it as an invisible force, like a
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  hand pressed hard against her chest, holding her back while everyone else flowed past her
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  in the church. She tried again and again, each time the same result. The crowd moved around
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  her and through the door she could not cross. She stood there. for a long time as the understanding
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  of what was happening slowly settled on her. Not as theological conclusion, as a physical
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  reality she could not deny. She was not being held back by a locked door or a crowd, she
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  was being held back by what she was. She went to a corner of the entrance hall where an icon
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  of the Virgin Mary hung on the wall and she wept. For a long time she wept. Then she prayed,
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  the broken, halting prayer of a woman who had not prayed seriously in seventeen years, asking
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  the Virgin to intercede for her, asking to be allowed in, promising, though she was not
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  yet sure what the promise meant, that she would go wherever she was directed. When she finished
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  praying, she walked back to the door. She went through. She stayed in the church for a long
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  time. When she came out, she heard or felt or somehow received a voice telling her to cross
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  the Jordan River and go into the desert. She had three coins in her pocket. She bought three
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  loaves of bread. She found the Jordan River, crossed it and walked into the wilderness.
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  She was 29 years old. Now, Here is where most people's imaginations fail, because what comes
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  next is so far outside ordinary human experience that it's almost impossible to picture it fully.
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  She was in the desert for 47 years, alone, no community, no monastery, no other human being
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  for the vast majority of that time. The three loaves of bread she bought in Jerusalem lasted
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  her 17 years. She is specific about this in a way that no one else has offered a natural
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  explanation for. After that, she whatever sparse wild plants grew in that stretch of
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  wilderness east of the Jordan, which was very little. Her clothes rotted away, her hair grew
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  long and turned white from the sun and the years, her skin became dark and deeply weathered.
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  The woman who had spent 17 years in Alexandria where physical appearance was everything became
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  in the description of the monk who eventually found her a gaunt white haired figure moving
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  through the desert like something between a person and a vision. And she struggled enormously
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  for the first 17 years in the desert. She was tormented by the same desires and appetites
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  she had spent her previous life indulging. The memories came at her constantly and without
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  mercy. The smell of wine, the noise and heat of Alexandria's streets, the pull of every
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  pleasure she had walked away from. She fought them with prayer, with tears, with the words
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  of scripture she had heard only in fragments before her conversion and somehow now knew
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  them by heart. This is one of the most honest accounts of what real conversion actually costs
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  that I have ever come across. She did not walk into that desert and immediately become peaceful
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  and holy. No, she walked into the desert and spent 17 years in open warfare with herself,
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  with her memory, her desire, and the life she had chosen to leave behind. Then after those
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  17 years of struggle, something changed. She describes it as a great peace descending.
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  The passions quieted, not all at once, in a single dramatic moment, but gradually and then
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  completely. The battle was over. What came after was something she struggled to put into words.
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  She simply lived, alone with God, in the desert, for thirty more years. About 47 years after
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  Mary first walked into the wilderness, a monk named Zosimas was doing what the monks of
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  his community did every Lent, walking deep into the desert to fast and pray in solitude. He
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  was an experienced monk, serious about his faith, so not a man easily given to seeing things
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  that were not there. He saw a figure moving among the rocks in the distance, emaciated.
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  white-haired, barely clothed in the remnants of what had once been garments. He called
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  out, and the figure fled. He chased her, calling that he was a monk and meant no harm. Eventually,
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  she stopped. She called him by his name. Note, a name he had never told her. What followed
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  was one of the most unusual conversations in the recorded history of Christian spirituality.
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  This educated, devout, experienced monk sat with a woman who had not spoken to another
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  human being in decades and found himself in the presence of someone whose knowledge of
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  scripture and depth of prayer went beyond his own. Someone who had arrived through the hardest
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  possible road at a place he was still trying to reach. She told him her story, all of it,
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  Alexandria, the boat, the church door that would not open, the 47 years, she held nothing back.
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  Then she asked him to come back the following year on Holy Thursday and bring her the Eucharist,
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  which she had not received since the day of her conversion. He came back as she had asked.
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  She walked across the Jordan River to meet him. He actually watched her walk on the water
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  with his own eyes. She received communion. She cried. She asked him to return one more
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  year and bring a burial cloth. When Zosimas returned the third time, after traveling for
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  20 days into the desert to the spot where he had first found her, he found her body lying
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  there peacefully. Near her head, written in the sand in letters he could read, was a short
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  message asking him to bury her there. It also told him when she had died, the very night
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  she had received communion from him, a full year before. So she had died immediately after
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  receiving the Eucharist. She was illiterate, but the inscription was legible. That detail
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  is noted explicitly in the ancient account as one of the miracles of her death. Her body
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  showed no decay. He did not know how to dig a grave alone in that hard ground, and as odd
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  as this sounds, a lion appeared and helped him dig. When the work was finished, the lion walked
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  away into the desert and Zosimas returned to the monastery. Whether you take every miraculous
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  detail of this story literally, or understand some of them as later embellishments, What
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  remains consistent across the ancient accounts is this. A woman named Mary lived alone in
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  the Judean desert for nearly five decades. She was found by a monk, told him her full story
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  without softening it, died, and was buried by the monk. All right, back on the porch. So
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  the thing I keep returning to with Mary, and likely you are probably returning to this as
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  well, is that invisible hand at the church door. So she did not go to Jerusalem seeking
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  conversion and she was not in a season of spiritual searching. She had not been slowly building
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  toward a change of life. She was 29 years old. She had been living the same way since she
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  was 12. And from her own account, she had no particular plans to stop. But something stopped
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  her anyway. Not gently, not as a quiet suggestion. as an unmovable reality she could not argue
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  with, push through, or ignore. I think a lot of us have met versions of that door. Am I
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  right? I the thing you kept trying that kept not working, the path that kept closing in
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  front of you even when you could not see why, the place where your own will finally ran into
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  something stronger than itself. Mary's response to that moment is worth sitting with carefully.
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  She did not get up angry and leave. She did not decide the universe was against her and
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  give up. She went to a corner and she cried honestly, openly without pretending she had
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  anything together. And she asked for help. When the door finally opened, she walked through
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  it. And then she walked all the way into the desert. That last part is the one that both
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  inspires and humbles me. Because most of us, when a closed door finally opens, want the
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  comfortable version of what is on the other side, the version that does not cost too much.
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  Mary got a voice pointing her toward the Jordan River and the wilderness, and she went. I've
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  been sitting with that question. What am I doing with the doors in my own life that will not
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  open? Not the ones I am still shoving against with everything I have. But the ones I have
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  finally quietly admitted are closed, permanently closed. Am I standing in the corner weeping
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  honestly and asking for direction? Or am I still in the entrance hall arguing with the door
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  trying to force it open, resenting it, and refusing to consider that it might be trying
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  to send me somewhere I do not yet want to go? Well, that leads into the practical challenge
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  this week. This week, it is simple. and difficult. Think of one door in your life that will not
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  open, not so you can try to force it one more time, but so you can ask, genuinely and honestly,
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  whether the door closed might be telling you something, and whether there is a desert on
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  the other side of it that you have been refusing to see. And now it's time for the closing prayer.
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  Lord, thank you for Mary of Egypt. Thank you that you stopped a woman at a door she could
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  not cross, not to shame her, but to redirect her. Thank you that 47 years in the desert
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  produced something a lifetime in Alexandria could never have produced. For everyone listening
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  who is standing at that door that will not open, give them Mary's honesty. Give them the courage
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  to stop pushing, to go to the corner, to cry a little. and to ask for direction. And give
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  them the willingness to go wherever the voice points, even when it points somewhere hard
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  and lonely. And for anyone who believes their past is too far gone, their history too complicated,
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  their choice is too many and too public to ever be redeemed, give them Mary, a woman who told
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  her entire story without editing a single word of it. and who God met exactly where she was.
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  We love you, even at the doors that will not open. Amen. One more thing before we go. Mary
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  of Egypt is the patron saint of converts for obvious reasons, but she is also the patron
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  saint of chastity, which is either deeply ironic or deeply appropriate depending on how you
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  look at it. and she is invoked against skin diseases and fevers because she spent 47 years
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  completely exposed to the elements of the desert and somehow survived it. In the Eastern Orthodox
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  and Coptic traditions, she is one of the most celebrated saints. The fifth Sunday of Great
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  Lent is actually called the Sunday of Saint Mary of Egypt. Her story is read aloud in the
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  services. She is not an obscure figure there. She is central. But in the Western Catholic
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  Church, she is far less known. And that is a real loss. Because her story says something
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  about the reach and the cost of grace that very few other saints' stories say quite as directly
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  or as unflinchingly. Her feast day in the Roman Catholic calendar is April 2nd. The woman who
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  ran away from home at 12, who spent 17 years in Alexandria doing what she did, who stood
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  at a door she could not cross at 29 and who then disappeared into the desert for the rest
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  of her life is still being prayed to 17 centuries later. Well, that is episode 12 of Everyday
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  Saints. If Mary's story moved you, share it with just one person. Someone who might need
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  to hear that a door that will not open is not always a punishment. Sometimes it is a direction.
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  Leave a review if you have a minute, it definitely helps more people find the show. Next week,
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  we go back to a name most of you will recognize immediately and a story that is far stranger
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  and far more human than anything you were taught about them in school. I'm John O'Connor, thanks
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  for sitting on the porch with me and I will see you next week.