The first seventeen years were the hardest

It feels like a mini-vacation from blogging.  Nothing since last Thursday, I guess.  In the meantime, I’ve traveled, come back, collected my wife and younger daughter safely home from England, and here I am back at my desk in the office.  It was a good weekend, and it’s great to have the globetrotters back home again.  Of course, in only about five weeks I’ll be sending Olga off to Greece.  Lucky dog.  I’m plotting a return to Mount Athos this fall myself, but we’ll just have to see if that works out.

In any event, I had intended to write about St. Mary of Egypt over the weekend, since we dedicate the fifth Sunday of Lent, i.e., yesterday, to her.  Of course, it’s not Sunday any longer, but I love St. Mary, so I’m going to write about her anyway.  Because I’m capricious and stubborn, or something.

St. Mary, though, is a saint that I suspect speaks strongly to a lot of people in this day and age.  Her story involves behavior that resonates with modern day people, both men and women, followed by a depth of repentance that astounds.  Mary was born sometime in the latter part of the fifth century — in Egypt, naturally — and left home when she was twelve years old.  She went to Alexandria, where for seventeen years she begged for her bread and slept with innumerable men.  Her lust was enormous.  One day, she ran across a group of men who were going to Jerusalem for the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.  Thinking it would be fun to go along, Mary went with the men on the boat.  Even though she had no money for the fare, she thought to herself “I have a body — they shall take it instead of pay for the journey.”  So she boarded the boat, and spent the journey doing precisely that.  One wonders about the sanctity of the “pilgrims” as well, but that is not really the point of the story.

Once in Jerusalem, she followed the crowds to the Church, but found herself unable to enter it.  It was not that anyone else had trouble gaining entrance.  Instead, it was as if an invisible being blocked her way every time she tried to go through the door.  Mary understood what was happening, and at that moment her heart broke.  She wept, and that was the beginning of repentance.  She was finally able to enter, where she took communion and then, taking a few loaves of bread with her, fled alone into the desert.  She was 29 years old.

Forty seven years passed.  One day, St. Zosimas, a monk spending Lent alone in the desert, saw in the distance a figure fleeing from him.  Wondering who it might be, alone in the wasteland, he pursued the person.  He managed to get close enough to see that it was a old woman.  She finally turned and asked him for his cloak to cover herself, since she was naked.  It was Mary.  He asked her for her story, and she related the tale of her early life.  Then, she talked about her time in the desert, and said those words that I like to think about every time I screw up, i.e., constantly:

She said to him: “Believe me, Abba, seventeen years I passed in this desert fighting wild beasts — mad desires and passions. When I was about to partake of food, I used to begin to regret the meat and fish which of which I had so much in Egypt. I regretted also not having wine which I loved so much. for I drank a lot of wine when I lived in the world, while here I had not even water. I used to burn and succumb with thirst. The mad desire for profligate songs also entered me and confused me greatly, edging me on to sing satanic songs which I had learned once. But when such desires entered me I struck myself on the breast and reminded myself of the vow which I had made, when going into the desert.

The first seventeen years were the hardest.  In this age of instant gratification and instant salvation, who could suffer as St. Mary suffered for the salvation of her soul?  Who pursues God with such intensity and single-mindedness?  Who truly abandons self so profoundly?  Not me, to my shame.  Hardly anybody, in fact.

There is a lot more to St. Mary’s story, and it makes fascinating reading.  It is all over the net, but the original version as written by St. Sophronius of Jerusalem, may be found at this website.

I may simply be unaware of their presence elsewhere, but stories of people — both men and women — breaking out of lives of incredible depravity are very common for the Orthodox.  Even St. Theodora, wife of the Emperor Justinian the Great, is remembered for an early life that makes for the most blush-inducing reading ever.  Her contemporary Procopious wrote at least an R-rated (and maybe X, depending on your definition) chronicle of her exploits, but she is honored by the Church for the second part of her life.  Another noteworthy Theodora is St. Theodora of Alexandria, my wife’s name saint.  In her case, she had an adulterous affair, but was so overcome with grief and contrition that she fled the city.  Disguising herself as a man, she entered a male monastery, and distinguished herself for her piety.  After several years, however, a girl from a neighboring village accused her — the monk Theodore — of fathering her baby.  Theodora did nothing to defend herself, even as she was put out of the monastery by the monks.  She lived outside the walls, raising the child she could not have fathered, and finally was allowed back in only after the passage of a number of years.  Her secret was not discovered until she died, as the brothers prepared her body for burial.

Great examples of repentance and humility are everywhere for us to see.  But everyday, in particular, I remember St. Mary of Egypt.  When I flare in anger or think ugly thoughts or do something else I ought not do, I always remember:  The first seventeen years were the hardest.

That time again…

Time for my monthly visit to Johnstown.  In all honesty, getting ready for this one has been difficult.  Part of it was what I wrote about the other day, the difficulties I had writing about St. Gregory Palamas.  In many ways it is deeper than that though.  Some of it has been the onset of Lent, which has preoccupied me to some extent.  I got an e-mail about a week ago from a classmate suggesting he was in the same predicament.

Part of it is also the absence of my wife for the last couple of weeks.  On the one hand, I have enjoyed the time alone.  The quiet is nice, the relatively small number of dirty dishes — one person as opposed to three — is nice.  Being alone has some positive aspects.  But it has also grown wearisome.  I am looking forward to seeing my wife and younger daughter.  I depend on my wife for a lot of things: for conversation, counsel, affection, spooning.  I miss all of that.  I’m ready for her to come home.

Of course, she may have other thoughts.  She’ll be in London this weekend, wild and crazy.  She may decide to stay.  I hope not though.  I hope she is as ready to come home as I am to have her.

So the day after I get back from Pittsburgh, I’ll go back to the airport in Atlanta and join the crowd of hopeful people watching the escalators where returning passengers emerge, near the baggage claim area.  Whenever I go through the airport, I see that crowd.  Dozens, hundreds of people, all looking hopefully toward the top of the escalators.  You pass the reunions, people holding on to each other for dear life, kids jumping up and down begging to be lifted up, husbands and wives caressing each other’s face.  When my older daughter came back from her liturgical music school last summer, we stood there holding a placard reading “OLGA”, just in case she had forgotten what we look like.  A couple of weeks just outside a Russian monastery will do that to a person.  I assume London might too.  Just in case, honey, I’ll be the one with the rose clutched between my teeth, anxiously searching the crowds.

Come home, baby.  Your cat misses you, Pascha is in only two weeks, the pink eye was nipped in the bud, your home is calling you.  But more — much more — than all that, I miss you.  Hurry home, sweetheart.