Abbey-Roads2

(I’m so screwed up on days since my Internet went down, I only realized today is Tuesday because “American Idol” is on TV tonight!  Otherwise I was thinking it was Wednesday - when Internet is down, time seems to go so slowly…just kidding Ray.)

Anyway I missed a post on my favorite saint - well one of them - St. Mary of Egypt.  The harlot who became a great penitent in the desert.   Here is a portion of her life:

Blessed Mary telling her story to the monk Zosima:

“My native land, holy father, was Egypt. Already during the lifetime of my parents, when I was twelve years old, I renounced their love and went to Alexandria. I am ashamed to recall how there I at first ruined my maidenhood and then unrestrainedly and insatiably gave myself up to sensuality. It is more becoming to speak of this briefly, so that you may just know my passion and my lechery. for about seventeen years, forgive me, I lived like that. I was like a fire of public debauch. And it was not for the sake of gain — here I speak the pure truth. Often when they wished to pay me, I refused the money. I acted in this way so as to make as many men as possible to try to obtain me, doing free of charge what gave me pleasure. do not think that I was rich and that was the reason why I did not take money. I lived by begging, often by spinning flax, but I had an insatiable desire and an irrepressible passion for lying in filth. This was life to me. Every kind of abuse of nature I regarded as life.” -From the Complete Life of St. Mary of Egypt by Patriarch Sophronious of Jerusalem.  Go here for the complete text.

Mary of Egypt always inspires my faith, having left everything, she went into the desert, naked, living a life of fasting and prayer.  Her feast is always celebrated in the fifth week of Lent in the Orthodox Church.

Did you know the Giotto cycle of fresco picturing the life of St Mary Magdalen depicted in the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi actually illustrate elements from the life of Mary of Egypt, albeit attributed to the Magdalen?  Yep. 

Here is another Orthodox tidbit.  The first days of Holy Week focus upon Jesus as The Bridegroom in the Orthodox liturgy:

“The Orthros Services of Holy Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday is called the Service of the Bridegroom, and gets its name from the central figure in the well-known parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25.1-13). “The title Bridegroom suggests the intimacy of love. It is not without significance that the Kingdom of God is compared to a bridal feast and a bridal chamber. The Christ of the Passion is the Divine Bridegroom of the Church. The imagery connotes the final union of the Lover and the beloved. The title Bridegroom also suggest the Parousia.” - St. Barbara Greek Orthodox site. 

Yep.