A saint of penitence

Today’s feast takes us way back to the Early Church with St Mary of Egypt (AD 344-421).  The story goes that ‘Mary was an Egyptian who left home at the age of twelve and went to live in Alexandria where she became an actress and a prostitute for seventeen years. At the age of twenty-nine she joined a pilgrimage to Jerusalem through curiosity, paying for her passage by offering herself to the sailors. Once in Jerusalem, although wanting to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, she was held back by an invisible and irresistible force. Lifting her eyes to an icon of the Blessed Virgin, she was told to go over the Jordan where she would find repentance and rest. She bought three loaves and went to live in the desert, where for the rest of her long life she lived on the bread which never diminished and on dates and berries. Her clothes wore out but her hair grew long and covered her nakedness. She could not read but was divinely instructed in the Christian faith and never tired of doing penance.’  This story of the bread that never diminished takes us back to our patron St Elijah and the widow he stayed with. ‘So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. 16 For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.’ (This again is the eucharistic theme that runs like a red thread through both Testaments and particularly in the feeding of the five thousand.) So we both as Catholics and in Carmel (with our father Elijah) have a special connection with a soul like Mary of Egypt.

Intercessions:

Brian Davis – cancer

Marie, Bernard (and wife Angela) - cancer

Siena, Elara – sick children

Wojtek – massive heart attack leaving him incapacitated

David - housebound

Sophia – blind infant