St Mary of Egypt: Her Story, Feast Day and Prayer

St Mary of Egypt is the great penitent of the early Church: a woman of Alexandria who lived for some seventeen years in open sin, was converted at the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and spent the rest of her life alone in the desert beyond the Jordan. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on 2 April with the surname "the Sinner"; she has no feast in the universal calendar of 1962, while the Byzantine churches keep her on 1 April and again on the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Below is her story as the ancient Life tells it, what is certain and what is uncertain about it, her icon, and the way a Catholic may pray to her.

Who was St Mary of Egypt?

Everything we know of St Mary of Egypt comes from one source: a Greek Life, traditionally attributed to St Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem in the seventh century, which says it sets down a story kept by the monks of a monastery near the Jordan. The Bollandists, the Jesuit scholars who edited the Acta Sanctorum, judged that the Life was written earlier than Sophronius, before the year 500, and so by another hand.

Either way, the narrative is very old, and it passed into the West in a Latin translation, among the Lives of the Fathers of the desert, and later through the Golden Legend and the martyrologies. The Church read it as the story of a real woman and a real conversion; the details of the narrative are those of the Life itself, which we follow here and do not embellish.

Her dates are uncertain. The Bollandists placed her death on 1 April 421, which would put her birth around 344; many other authorities put it a century later. What does not vary is the shape of her life: seventeen years of sin, one hour of grace, forty-seven years of penance.

The story of St Mary of Egypt

Seventeen years in Alexandria

Mary was born in Egypt. At the age of twelve she left her parents and went to Alexandria, and there, by her own account to the monk Zosimas, she lived for about seventeen years as a public sinner. The Life is frank, and puts the frankness in her own mouth: she hides nothing of what she was.

The pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the closed door

One summer she saw a crowd of pilgrims embarking for Jerusalem to keep the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. She went with them, not to pray, but to continue her old life among them. In Jerusalem, on the day of the feast, she followed the crowd to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where the relic of the True Cross was shown to the faithful. Others entered freely; she alone was held back at the threshold, as by an invisible force. She tried again and again, and each time she was thrust back.

Then, for the first time, she understood what her life was. Standing in the courtyard, she saw an icon of the Mother of God. She wept, confessed her impurity before the Virgin, and begged to be allowed to see the wood on which her Son had suffered, promising that she would renounce the world and go wherever the Mother of God would lead her. She tried the door again, and entered without hindrance, and venerated the Cross.

"If you cross the Jordan"

Returning to the image to give thanks, she heard a voice, as from far off, telling her that if she crossed the Jordan she would find rest. With three coins she had been given she bought three loaves. She reached the Jordan that same evening, received Holy Communion at the church of St John the Baptist by the river, and crossed into the desert, taking nothing with her but the bread.

Forty-seven years in the desert

There she lived alone for forty-seven years. For the first seventeen, she told Zosimas, she fought her old passions as one fights wild beasts, and only after those years did peace come to her. Her clothes fell to pieces, her body was blackened by the sun, and she lived on the little the desert gave her. She had never learned anything from books; what she knew of God, God Himself had taught her in the solitude.

The monk Zosimas

Zosimas was a priest and monk of Palestine, grown old in the religious life. According to the custom of his monastery by the Jordan, the monks went out into the desert alone for the forty days of Lent. On one of these journeys he saw a figure, naked and blackened by the sun, with hair white as wool, which fled from him. He ran after it; she called out to him by name, and he threw her his cloak so that she could cover herself. Then, at his insistence, she told him her whole story, and asked him to tell no one while she lived.

She asked one thing more: that the following year, on Holy Thursday evening, he would come to the bank of the Jordan bringing the Body and Blood of the Lord. He came at the appointed hour. She appeared on the farther bank, made the sign of the Cross over the water, and walked across it to him. She received Holy Communion from his hands, and asked him to come back the next year to the place where he had first found her.

Her death and the lion

When Zosimas returned the following Lent, he found her lying dead. Beside her, written in the sand, were the words asking him to bury the humble Mary, and saying that she had died on the very night of the Lord's Passion, after receiving the divine Mysteries. He was old and had no spade; the Life says that a lion came out of the desert and helped him dig the grave, and that Zosimas buried her and went back to tell her story to his brethren.

That is the narrative. The lion, the walking on the water, the voice at the church door are what the Life reports; we give them as the Life gives them, a pious account handed down by the Church, not as facts we can verify.

How long was St Mary of Egypt in the desert?

According to her Life, forty-seven years. She told Zosimas that this many years had passed since she left the holy city; if she went to Alexandria at twelve and lived there about seventeen years, she was about seventy-six when he met her, and she died the next year. The figure appears in all the ancient tellings, though the dates of her life in our own calendar remain uncertain.

When is the feast day of St Mary of Egypt?

The answer depends on the rite.

• In the Roman rite, St Mary of Egypt is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on 2 April, in Palestine, with the surname "the Sinner". She is not on the universal calendar of 1962: there is no Mass or Office of her in the Roman Missal or Breviary for the whole Church. In some places she was kept by local custom, on 2 April or on other days, and her relics were venerated at Rome, Naples, Cremona, Antwerp and elsewhere.
• In the Byzantine rite, Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic alike, her feast is 1 April, the date of her death given in the Life. She is also honoured on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast, and her Life is read at Matins on the Thursday of the fifth week, together with the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete.

At Rome itself, the small ancient temple by the Tiber known as the Temple of Portunus was converted into a church in the ninth century and has long borne her name: Santa Maria Egiziaca.

Is St Mary of Egypt a Catholic saint?

Yes. She is one of the saints honoured by the Church since before the formal process of canonization existed, and the Roman Martyrology, the official list of the saints of the Roman Church, names her on 2 April. The fact that so many parishes dedicated to her today are Orthodox — St Mary of Egypt Orthodox churches are found across America — only shows how great a place she holds in the East. She belongs to the common tradition of the Church from before the separation of East and West, and a Catholic may invoke her as freely as he invokes St Anthony of the Desert or St Jerome.

What is St Mary of Egypt the patron saint of?

No pope has given St Mary of Egypt an official patronage, and we will not invent one. Christian piety has always made her the model and protectress of penitents, especially of those who struggle against sins of impurity and of those who have long lived far from God and want to come back. She is the proof that no past is too heavy for the mercy of God, and that the way back passes through the same means the Church offers to all: a sincere Confession, the Holy Eucharist, prayer and penance.

She is often set beside St Mary Magdalene, the penitent, and medieval art borrowed her features — the long hair covering the body of a woman alone in the wilderness — for images of the Magdalene. Those who love one usually love the other; you may also pray the novena to St Mary Magdalene.

The icon of St Mary of Egypt

In the Eastern icon, St Mary of Egypt is shown as an old, emaciated woman, her skin darkened by the sun, her hair white, often covered only by the cloak of Zosimas; her hands are raised in prayer or crossed on her breast. Other icons show the scenes of her life around the central figure: the refusal at the church door, the prayer before the image of the Mother of God, the crossing of the Jordan, the communion given by Zosimas, the lion digging the grave.

In the West, she is recognised by her long hair and by the three loaves she bought on the way to the Jordan. Medieval artists told her story in glass and in paint, and Tintoretto painted her in the desert for the Scuola di San Rocco at Venice.

A prayer to St Mary of Egypt

Because St Mary of Egypt has no feast in the 1962 Missal, the Missal has no proper Collect in her honour. The Church's own prayer for a holy woman who was neither virgin nor martyr is the Collect of the Common Cognovi, which the Missal uses for such saints; on 2 April it may be prayed privately with her name:

Collect of the Common of Holy Women (Missa Cognovi)

Exaudi nos, Deus, salutaris noster: ut, sicut de beatae Mariae Aegyptiacae festivitate gaudemus; ita piae devotionis erudiamur affectu. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Hear us, O God our Saviour: that as we rejoice in the festival of blessed Mary of Egypt, so we may be taught the affection of loving devotion. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

Her own prayer, the one that opened the door of the Holy Sepulchre, is the best model of all. It is the prayer of every true conversion: to acknowledge one's sin without excuse, to beg the Mother of God for her help, and to promise to go wherever God leads. It finds its perfect words in the Act of Contrition, and it is answered, as hers was, at the altar: the first thing she did after her conversion was to receive Holy Communion, and the last thing she asked of this world was to receive it again.

What St Mary of Egypt teaches

The Life is written to be read in Lent, and its lessons are those of Lent. Conversion is not a feeling but a door that is opened after we have knocked; the Mother of God stands at that door; and penance, even forty-seven years of it, is not the price of pardon — her pardon was given the day she wept in the porch — but the long healing of a soul that had been deeply wounded. Her story is told by the Church, in her own words, as the story of a woman whom no one would have thought a saint. That is why the despairing have loved her for fifteen centuries.

The tradition also remarks that the decisive grace came to her before the Cross, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and that the end of her life fell on the night of the Lord's Passion. Her whole conversion was hung on the Cross of Christ.

Through the eyes of tradition

St Mary of Egypt is an ancient saint, not a modern one, but she is not in the universal Roman calendar of 1962, which is the calendar of this app: you will not find her Mass in the Missal or her Office in the Breviary for the whole Church. The Church of Rome kept her memory through the Roman Martyrology, where she stands on 2 April, and through the devotion of the faithful, who read her Life especially in Lent. It is entirely traditional to honour her in that way: by reading her story, by invoking her, and by imitating her penance during the forty days.

What the Church never asked was that every detail of the narrative be held as history. The core — a great sinner converted by the grace of God at Jerusalem, who ended her life in penance in the desert and was honoured as a saint by East and West — is what the tradition received; the rest is the Life, to be read with reverence and discernment, as the Church reads the old Lives of the Fathers of the desert. Among the Catholic saints of the Roman calendar, the nearest to her in spirit is St Mary Magdalene, kept on 22 July, the penitent who stood at the foot of the Cross.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is St Mary of Egypt known for?

She is known as the great example of repentance: a woman who lived about seventeen years in public sin at Alexandria, was converted before an image of the Mother of God at the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and spent forty-seven years in penance in the desert beyond the Jordan.

When did St Mary of Egypt live?

The dates are uncertain. The Bollandists placed her death on 1 April 421; many other scholars place it about a century later. All agree that she lived in the early centuries, before the Life that tells her story was written down, at the latest in the seventh century.

Who wrote the Life of St Mary of Egypt?

The Life is traditionally attributed to St Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem in the seventh century, who says he wrote down a story kept by the monks near the Jordan. Some scholars, among them the Bollandists, think it is older and by another author.

Is there a novena to St Mary of Egypt?

No ancient novena to her has come down to us in the Roman tradition. The traditional way to honour her is to read her Life, especially in Lent, to invoke her, and to make a good Confession; the examination of conscience is the place to begin.

Why is she called "the Sinner"?

Because she never hid what she had been. The Roman Martyrology itself gives her that surname on 2 April, and the Life puts the whole account of her sins in her own mouth: her humility in telling it is part of her holiness.

Did St Mary of Egypt receive Communion in the desert?

According to the Life, she received Holy Communion only twice after her conversion: at the church of St John by the Jordan before she crossed into the desert, and from the hands of Zosimas on Holy Thursday, forty-seven years later. She died, the Life says, on the night she received it the second time.

The Iter Fidei app carries the calendar of 1962, the Roman Missal and the Breviary in Latin and English, and the prayers for Confession and Communion. Join early access here.

Sources. Life of St Mary of Egypt, attributed to St Sophronius of Jerusalem. Roman Martyrology, 2 April. Roman Missal (1962), Common of Holy Women neither Virgins nor Martyrs, Mass Cognovi. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), "St. Mary of Egypt".