REMEMBER SINS AND DESPAIR NOT: A HOMILY ON THE SUNDAY OF ST. MARY OF EGYPT

Jesse Dominick

This Sunday we commemorate the great female ascetic St. Mary of Egypt. There are so many things we can learn from St. Mary. The Church gives her to us during this time of fasting as the supreme example of a life of asceticism. Last Sunday was the Sunday of St. John Climacus whose book The Ladder of Divine Ascent is the supreme ascetical text, and this week we have St. Mary of Egypt who shows us the supreme ascetical life. We even read her entire life during the Great Canon of St. Andrew this past Thursday, so you know that she is incredibly important. There are so many things we can learn from her—but the thing I want to focus on is the remembrance of sins.

TWO KINDS OF ASCETICISM

The “Standing of St. Mary of Egypt”

Priest Maxim Prikhodko

Our Lenten journey has several important markers, several special liturgical days. One of these remarkable landmarks is the “standing of St. Mary”—the day [in the fifth week of Great Lent] when at the evening service the entire Canon of repentance of St. Andrew of Crete is read, and along with it, the faithful listen to the amazing life of a woman acetic who lived in the late fifth-early sixth century—St. Mary of Egypt.

Saint Mary the Egyptian

Metropolitan Iosif of Prikonisos 

The fifth Sunday of Lent is dedicated to Saint Mary the Egyptian. This Mary is a unique and eternal example of repentance and of rehabilitation and perfection in Christ. As we enter the final straight towards the Spotless Passion, and the Life-Bearing Resurrection of Our Lord, the need for proper preparation through repentance, so that we can experience in a redemptive manner the Cross and Resurrection, becomes ever more urgent and imperative. This is why, on this Sunday, the Church highlights the figure and example of Saint Mary, in order to provide the help we need.

Canon of St. Andrew of Crete

Monday of the First Week

Ode 1

A Helper and a Protector has become salvation to me.
This is my God, Whom I will glorify.
God of my fathers
I will exalt Him for in glory was He glorified.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me.

The days of holy Great Lent are a time of preparation for confession and Holy Communion. These days have come to us once again. But how often do they pass us by without bringing us palpable benefit? Of course, this is not because they are unable to do us any good, but because we are too careless, we dismiss them too easily. Think seriously about what confession and Communion grant to us, and why they exist in the Orthodox Church. 

There is Hope for Power-Hungry Disciples, a Prostitute, and Us

Fr. Philip LeMasters 

The tragic events of the last week both in Boston and in West have reminded us all of the brokenness, pain, and corruption of life in the world as we know it. God did not create humanity for terrorist bombings, industrial explosions, fear, mourning, and suffering, but to participate in the peace, joy, and holiness of the heavenly Kingdom even as we live in the world He created. As we near the end of Lent this year, we should have no illusions about how far human beings have fallen short of fulfilling the Lord’s purposes for us.

The Memory of the Blessed Mary the Egyptian

  Nektarios Thanos

“… her many sins have been remitted, because she loved greatly” Luke 7, 47.

St. John Chrysostom

Homily 65 on Matthew 20. 17-19; 29-30.

St. John Chrysostom

Homilies on Hebrews 9: 11-14

St. John Chrysostom

Homily 3 on Galatians 23-29

Learning Resolve From St. Mary of Egypt

Archpriest Alexander Iliashenko

Today we celebrate the memory of one of the greatest saints known to the history of the Church: Mary of Egypt. She spent her life not as an ordinary person, but as a highly spiritual one, as an angel in the flesh. Her life was beyond our comprehension: how can someone live for forty-seven years in the desert, perfectly alone and in silence, enduring terrible demonic temptations and the horror of death? The only kind of person who could take on such an ascetic struggle is one who loved Christ with all her being and was prepared to renounce even her natural human needs. And the Lord, beholding this extraordinary resolve, this extraordinary love, granted her everything needful. We do not understand how, spending forty-seven years in the desert, she did not perish from hunger, thirst, or disease. But the Lord strengthened her in this ascetic struggle by His grace-filled power.

5. Sunday Of The Great Lent

S. V. Bulgakov, Handbook

     The church service for this Sunday is devoted to the memory and glorification of the spiritual efforts of Saint Mary of Egypt (See Apr. 1), who "has cut down with the sword of abstinence the desires of your soul and the passions of your flesh. You have choked your sinful thoughts with the silence of the ascetic life, and you have watered all the wilderness with the streams of your tears, and caused the fruits of repentance to spring up for us" and "with works of Lenten fasting", "as the sun she shines revealed as a guide to all who have sinned". 

THIS IS OUR CHANCE TO BEAR GOOD FRUIT

From: The website of the Sergiev-Posad Deanery

In turn with the other triumphant, hopeful weeks of Great Lent, today the Holy Church remembers the ascetic struggles of St. Mary of Egypt. Why has the image of this great saint been inserted into this week? Is it because we see the triumph of God’s power and the triumph of truly reciprocated human love? Or, perhaps we see the triumph of the desperate human cry for help, and the victory granted by God, by His love, His power and strength? In a word, we see in it the triumph of repentance.

We’ll tell you a little about her life as she revealed it to the saintly desert-dweller Zosima. She was born in Egypt, and left her parents’ house at age twelve and went to Alexandria, where she began to live a life of sin.

The Fifth Sunday Of Great Lent: 

The Sunday Of Saint Mary Of Egypt

Introduction

On the Fifth Sunday of Lent the Orthodox Church commemorates our Righteous Mother Mary of Egypt. The feast day of Saint Mary of Egypt is April 1, however, she is also commemorated on this Sunday due to her recognition by the Church as a model of repentance.

Life Of The Saint

Our holy mother Mary was born in Egypt. She had left her parents at the age of twelve to go to Alexandria, where she spent the next seventeen years in debauchery and the greatest profligacy. Living on charity and linen-weaving, she nevertheless offered her body to any man, not being forced to it by dire necessity as were so many poor women, but as though she were consumed by the fire of a desire that nothing was able to appease.

Saint Mary of Egypt: A Living Example of the Power of Repentance

By Elder Epiphanios Theodoropoulos

Sermon for the Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt

by Metropolitan Anthony Sourozh

Why Is St. Mary of Egypt Remembered During Lent?

Each of the Sundays of Great Lent has its own special theme in the Orthodox Church. The First Sunday of Great Lent we celebrate the "Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy" since it was on this day in 843 A.D. that the final great heresy against the person of Christ, that of Iconoclasm, was eradicated and the Orthodox Faith became the standard by which mankind could achieve purification, illumination and glorification. The Second Sunday of Great Lent is dedicated to St. Gregory Palamas and serves as another triumph of the Orthodox Faith, this time against the heresy of Barlaam the Calabrian who taught that mankind cannot partake of glorification in this life.

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent

CATECHESIS 68: That We Must Be Renewed For What Is Ahead Through Endurance of the Trials That Fall Upon Us, Both Visible and Invisible. 

by St. Theodore the Studite

21 Interesting Facts About St. Mary of Egypt

By John Sanidopoulos

Venerable Mary the Egyptian

(Feast Day - April 1)

By St. Nikolai Velimirovich