Sarx

Reposted from the podcast last year…

THE STORY OF St Mary of Egypt has always had a special appeal to me because of my history. taking a profligate life and turning it Godward, as she did, she shows me a sign of hope: there is a possibility that I can find rest in the Lord.

She left home very young and went to the bustling metropolis of Alexandria. There she lived a life indulging in the desires of the flesh. She reports to her confessor that she didn’t even charge money for her pleasure - her only payment was the pleasure itself. One day, seeing a group of men waiting for a boat she asked them where they were going: to Jerusalem to see the holy sites. She desired to go with them, but having no money for the passage she invited herself along and said they would find a use for her. She continued in her ways even in the Holy City of Jerusalem until the time came for the feast of the Elevation of the Holy Cross, 14 October. She tries to enter the Church, but can not: an invisible force keeps her out. It slowly dawns on her that she can not get in because of her impurity.

She prays before an Icon of the Blessed Virgin and promises to amend her ways. She enters the Church, venerates the Holy Cross and flees to the far side of the Jordan there to wrestle demons for the rest of her life, finally finding purity and repentance. As Father said in the sermon this morning, her life of struggle and chastity flows forth in thanksgiving for the forgiveness she has been given.

The Church considers her so very much a saint as to give her not only a feast day (1 April) but also to-day, this Lenten Sunday and a 3rd Commemoration: the Thursday during Lent when her life is read liturgically. She is not a monastic, but a lay-woman. She is not well-educated, at least at the beginning of her life. She is, I dare say it, rather like poor trash that comes to the city nearly homeless and penniless and indulges herself until, living with sexual addiction, she can no longer control things, but rather they control her.

I’ve been there.

I work with people who’ve been there - not always in the same ways, but always with the same issues: whatever it is, we find we no longer control it. It controls us.

Mary turns all that around, with no education, with no clergy to guide her, with no church in which to worship. The Holy Spirit leads her into all truth - as He was promised to do (she can well quote the scriptures at the end of her life, having been taught them all in her heart). But only when she turns away from her addiction.

Olivier Clement says that in the “universe of Sin solitary individuals devour one another”. St Mary’s life shows us 30 years of that devouring. Those who do not live with a sexual addiction may identify more with the back-stabbing world of “the rat race” or the pride-filled world of academia or perhaps the pride-filled and back-stabbing worlds of politics or law. Being human requires being in communion. Of a necessity this can not happen in the presence of devouring. When we view other persons as a mark on a belt, or a bed-post, or a legal docket, or as DNA strings, or as piles of ballots and voter registrations we are missing the point - the image of God present to us in every face.

As individuals we are stranded without communion. It is possible to tumble in and out of what we call “love” and never find communion. It is possible to play with the flesh until the flesh dies, and find that never has one known the love of another human or of God.

Clement goes on to say that only when we come to terms each with himself as a mortal human with a limited life, as a humble creature in God’s creation, only then can we start to honestly Love others - to enter into communion with them, in chastity: not as flesh seeking to devour, but as the soul seeking God, present in the life of the other. St Augustine of Hippo says, “Noverim me, noverim te”: If I know myself, I know you.

St Mary’s life - in the extreme, perhaps, but in fullness - shows each of our lives. There is something that we hunger after more than anything - but sadly we often accept just about anything else in its place. When we realise the icon of God, present in our neighbour, present in the world around us, present inside each of us… then we can prostrate ourselves in worship, before the Throne of God. St Mary shows us that it is possible even in to-day’s world, where we find so many options to feed the flesh that we almost - were it possible - forget the soul.

But it will not let us sleep until it has driven us into the solitude where it becomes possible to finally see God.