The Story of Mary
~ Professor Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Ph. D., Brown University
The story of Mary of Egypt as it is written for the church is really three separate stories: The story of Mary’s life, the story of the priest Zosimas, and the story of their experience together. Without doubt, the action and thrills come in Mary’s story, which she tells to Zosimas when he finds her wandering in the desert. She had been a wanton harlot form her youth, not for money, she told Zosimas solemnly, but “out of insatiable desire”. One day she saw the crowds of pilgrims preparing to go to Jerusalem, to celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. It sounded like fun. She went along, announcing to her fellow-travellers, “I have a body and that will serve as both fare and food for me”. The trip was an eventful one, as Mary explored the outer limits of lust and passion with her companions (both those who were willing and those who were not, she added.)
In Jerusalem, when the day of the Feast came round, Mary too set off for the church, drawn by the energy of the crowds thronging to venerate the True Cross. But something happened. At the doors of the church, at its very threshold, Mary was driven back “by some kind of force”. Trying as she might, she could not enter, although those around her went in with no difficulty at all. Then she understood: it was her own self that prevented her entrance, the sinfulness of her life that held her captive outside the church. Praying fervently to the Virgin Mary, with her heart open and clear, Mary begged forgiveness and again sought entry at the church. She remembered it like this, “A great terror and stupor came over me, and I trembled all over, but when I came to the door which until then had been closed to me, it was as if all the force that had previously prevented me from entering now allowed me to go in. So I was admitted without hindrance, and went into the holy of holies and I was found worthy to worship the mystery of the precious and life-giving Wood of the Cross. Thus, I understood the promises of God and realized how God receives those who repent.
Guided then by a vision of the Theotokos, Mary left at once for the desert beyond the Jordan River, for there, her vision told her, she would find rest. On the way, she stopped at a church built on the river banks; there she washed herself in the Jordan, receiving thus her baptism, and partook of the Eucharist in that church, all the while utterly alone. From there, she came to the desert, led still by the vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her new life was begun.
A powerful story, indeed! Here was a woman of true courage, a woman who had the courage to know herself. She lived life with a perfect freedom and a perfect love that few of us could match. Prior to her conversion, she embraced life with her whole heart, with her whole body, with her whole self – with the sheer power of her love for life (not for money, she had said, but for the love of it). Once an early bishop of the church had seen such a harlot in Antioch, and had lamented to his priests, “if only we would adorn our souls for the Lord with half the care this woman has shown in adorning herself for Satan!” (Bp. Nonnos, from the Life of Pelagia). Mary knew herself and understood herself in all of this, again in a way that few of us could match. Hers was a life of total honesty, in the sense of that old adage, “to thine own self be true.” It was in fact her very honesty that brought her to her conversion.
At the doors of the church, Mary had hesitated – the first time in her life she had ever hesitated before doing exactly what she desired. At that moment, her honesty enabled her to see beyond herself. And there, beyond herself, she found God. Her conversion was immediate; but so, too, was the grace that answers genuine repentance. For in that single moment on the steps of the church, Mary was both changed in herself, and found worthy in the eyes of the Lord. Her response was entirely in character: with perfect freedom and perfect love, Mary turned the whole of herself to God – her heart, her body, her very life. With the huge courage that had once enabled her to lead her life of sin with clear self-understanding, she now lived her life in the presence of God. The desert became her home, the place where she found her rest. Her conversion and turn to the life of solitude were unknown to any other living being, until after forty-eight years the priest Zosimas came and found her.
~ Professor Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Ph. D. Doctor Harvey is a faculty member of the Religious Studies Department at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Professor Harvey received her Doctorate in Byzantine Studies from the University of Bermingham (England). She has taught Church History at the University of North Carolina and at the University of Rochester and served a fellowship at the Dunbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies. Doctor Harvey is a recognized Syriac scholar responsible for numerous translations and commentaries. With Doctor Sebastian Brock, she co-authored Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, a collection of newly translated lives of saints. At Brown University she offers courses in Orthodox Church history, monasticism and the ascetic tradition, Syriac and early Christian Literature. Coptic Orthodox Church Network, http://www.copticchurch.net/topics/synexarion/maryofegypt.htm.
