Mary of Egypt
Sometime around the year 421, Zosimas of Palestine was spending his customary 40 Days in the wilderness at Lent, in commemoration of Christ doing the same and being tempted by the devil. He had been hoping to encounter some desert hermit or other on his travels, but had had no success by the 20th day in the wilderness, as he raised his head to heaven at 6 pm to sing his devotions, as usual. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of a strange figure and, fearing it was the devil himself, made the sign of the cross, and gave pursuit.
‘It was naked, the skin dark as if burned up by the heat of the sun; the hair on its head was white as a fleece, and not long, falling just below its neck’, relates our source, Sophronius. This was Mary of Egypt. Once caught, she proceeded to relate her life story to Zosimas. She ran away from home aged 12, and became a prostitute at Alexandria. ‘It was not for the sake of gain… often when they wished to pay me, I refused the money… I had an insatiable desire and an irrepressible passion for lying in filth’.
Mary lived this way for 17 years, making money by begging and spinning flax. ‘Every kind of abuse of nature I regarded as life’, she confessed. One day, she saw a group of pilgrims planning to make their way to Jerusalem for the Exaltation of the Precious and Lifegiving Cross. Seeing a potential (non-paying) customer base, Mary paid her fare for the journey through sexual favors. However, when she tried to enter the church to see the ceremony, an invisible force prevented her egress. Mary then realized that she was deemed unworthy of the spectacle, and she fell down weeping.
Catching sight of an icon of the Virgin Mary, the prostitute made a vow: ‘be my faithful witness before thy son that I will never again defile my body by the impurity of fornication’. Finding that she could at last enter the church, albeit with difficulty, she prayed at the foot of the Cross, washed herself in the Jordan, and left for the desert. She spent the next 47 years running away from anyone she encountered and battling the demons of temptation. Zosimas returned to see her a year later only to find her dead, her body perfectly preserved.