Mary of Egypt, whose Sunday we celebrate today, valued all the temporal ‘attractions,’ the way of the world and the lusts of the flesh more than all else. Running away from home at 12, she made herself a harlot. For seventeen years, she was self-abused—she didn’t see the image of God in herself or in others, but made herself and others the objects of her insatiable passions.
Anyone who has prayed the Great Canon of St. Andrew, as we did on Thursday and as Orthodox Christians did around the world, knows her story. If you didn’t attend the Canon this year, I admonish you to do so next year. It’s an experience of repentance Holy Church says we all need.
The Canon focuses on the life of St. Mary of Egypt, which seems so extreme that it’s possible to lose the power of the teaching here for us: When we seek or give into the vanities of this world over the Kingdom of Heaven—power, influence, material wealth, or just all the other ‘things,’ other priorities, over Christ and His Church, over our worship of the One true God, we do harm to ourselves and others, we keep ourselves apart from Christ and His Kingdom. Relatively few may give themselves completely over to lust or some other passion as did Mary, but many will succumb to the enemy’s lies in more subtle and seemingly mundane ways, which can be just as deadly to our souls. This is, in part, the lesson of the Canon and the life of St. Mary.
The truth is that the way of the world and its priorities, which put God last in the list of our priorities, if at all, will keep us from Him who is eternal life: Good looks fade with age, power and influence too are temporal, riches can quickly turn into poverty with a bad economy or a natural disaster. Likewise, if we’re putting those everyday ‘things’ in our lives—whether those ‘things’ be work, study, family, whatever it is—before our communion with Christ and His Church, then we’re truly to be pitied because all these things are passing away.
Because He loves us, the Lord desires better for us; He desires for us to live with eternity before our eyes; to understand our identity as those grounded in Him, in that which is eternal. He would have us place our hope in His changelessness and not in those things that are always changing. He desires to help us put off sin and death, and to cleave to Him who is wholeness and Life.
A busy, preoccupied life, worldly success, the desire to be liked, feed our egos; the proud person cannot see God or be united with Him because God Himself is humble, not proud. Pride, as such, is incompatible with communion with Him. God demonstrates Himself to us as the ultimate ‘servant.’ He condescends to us, becoming man, to enter into and redeem human nature. He gives His own life to defeat sin and death for us on the cross. He bears with us patiently in our struggles, as a parent bears patiently with the child he loves. He disciplines us in love that we may learn and participate more and more fully in the life He alone is.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus reminds His disciples that He must suffer torture and death in order to defeat sin and death on our behalf—to make a way for us to inherit the Kingdom prepared for us, to again re-orientate our souls toward the true life that is only in Him. These are such stirring words, no? Christ reveals to them that He must die that mankind may live.
Immediately after telling them that He will die on their behalf, that He Himself is the ultimate, the final Pascha (Passover), the ‘Lamb’ to be slain, the disciples begin vying for who will be on top in His Kingdom. They picture the Kingdom of Heaven just like the way of the world where influence and power, so many mundane things, can consume us, or, at least, easily be the priority over the divine services, over our prayers, over our communion with Life. Instead of giving our “first fruits” to God, we find ourselves telling Him to be contented with whatever’s left over. The disciples want God to grant them their priorities. We can imagine some of the disciples falling prey to this mistaken thinking, because we ourselves might have done the same. Jesus reminds us all that the way of the world won’t get us anywhere in the economy of heaven. The priorities of the world are poison for the soul desiring Heaven and eternal life with God.
Instead, Jesus shows us a better way by example: a way that enables them and us to commune with the living God, to find freedom from vain and worldly pursuits, lust for power, covetousness over what we don’t have, and stinginess toward God. He says, “Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. For even the son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
This is also the story of Mary of Egypt: she was busy wearing out her body and destroying both her body and her soul when she was confronted by the icon of the Holy Theotokos. The icon of the Virgin convicted her with her purity, her humility; she was forbidden entrance into the holy church of the cross in Jerusalem. She couldn’t enter into the holy presence of Christ’s victory over sin and death because she herself had given herself over to sin and death; she couldn’t bear communion with Him, having given herself over to communion with the demon of lust.
The Holy Virgin, whose loving and pure image convicted her, was everything Mary was not; the Theotokos in her purity, humility, and YES to God’s love, in her servanthood and submission, in her prioritizing of the Kingdom of God in all that she represented, was inwards and outwards a mirror image to Mary’s licentiousness, her brazen vanity, her NO to God and to His likeness in her. Mary knew no love; the Theotokos knew only love and the two are simply incompatible.
In her despair over this realization, over her wasted life, where God was the last thing on her mind and in her priorities, she thirsted for a change. She desired a new beginning with even greater fervor than she’d desired the flesh up until that point—she turned away from her former life of communion with death and towards a new life in communion with Life, Jesus Christ.
After years of self-abuse, in giving into the basest of passions, it took Mary seventeen years of intense struggle through prayer and extreme fasting to find freedom and win the victory over her passions—for no one is beyond God’s healing and grace if they’re willing to humble themselves and confess their sins before God, and repent of their former life.
You may not have the depth of struggles with the passions or pride that Mary did. Perhaps you’re not so enraptured by this world’s temporal vanities, but we are all in need of continued healing and growth in God’s divine grace, in the humility, repentance, and single-mindedness, especially this single-mindedness, for Christ and the Kingdom of God that Mary exemplifies. Our growth in the likeness of God, our return to our full selves—whom God has made us to be as those who have “put on Christ” and for whom so much has been forgiven, begins with this humble honesty with ourselves, with our desire to love God more by loving each other right here, in the family of the Church. Only from this starting point of repentance, and forgiveness, and mutual love, do we learn to come outside ourselves to love those in the world, and draw them too into the net of Christ God’s love and truth. This is the Gospel! This is freedom from the world!
In a Mission such as ours, there are ample opportunities to love and serve, to ‘come outside ourselves’ to grow in humility and Christ-likeness—to prioritize the life in Him. No where do we better see that the Church is truly a family than in a mission where everyone is important and has a responsibility for the growth and provision of the whole: visitors don’t feel welcome unless there’s someone to get here early to welcome them, there’s no trapeza unless we sign up and bring something to share and stay for the fellowship, no choir without people to sing; no building unless all give of their “first fruits” rather than just their leftovers. The Great Canon of Repentance, the life of St. Mary, call us to a new beginning, to a greater fervency of faith, just when we need it, as Holy Week approaches. Make this year different: as we begin a new season in our new church, make this Holy Week also a time of renewal, a deepening of your faith, of prioritizing your communion with Christ and His eternal Kingdom over all else even as we journey with Him to the cross and His holy resurrection on the third day.
Mary’s soul was dead to Christ, but by putting to death her mortal members, she was made alive because Christ became her life. If we too wish to inherit eternal life with God, He must be the priority, the “all in all” of our lives as well. Holy Mother Mary, pray for us sinners!
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Church
2 April 2017, Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt
Epistle: Gal. 3:23-29; Heb. 9:11-14
Gospel: Luke 7: 36-50; Mark 10:32-45
