Cycles of Newness

Yesterday I had an interesting conversation over coffee. I was asked, “What are you doing with your life? My dad studied for years, always waiting for his life to start.” Reflecting on what I have learned in the past couple years from the Fathers and the Martyrs, “when does your life start?” has a simple answer: We are risen with Christ and our next life, our true life begins as soon as we join the Paschal Mystery shouting “Christ is risen!” Our life begins in the Kingdom, and the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand when his body comes together to offer up the Eucharist in the Divine Liturgy.

Did you ever hear the story of Saint Mary of Egypt? I thought not. It’s not a story the Evangelicals would tell you. Mary is an anti-hero of motivational speakers and traveling evangelists. She grew up in Egypt and became a prostitute at the age of 14. Half the time she charged nothing and was paid in her own pleasure. She hopped on a ship to Jerusalem full of pilgrims, following the party. When they arrived, she heard tell that pilgrims were headed en masse to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to venerate Christ’s Cross. As she attempted to enter the church an invisible force pushed her back. Three times she tried to enter and a voice spoke saying, “you are not worthy.” Heartbroken, she wandered Jerusalem in tears until she came upon an icon of the Mother of God holding the Christ Child. Before the icon she prayed, “Oh Holy Mother, Help me, O All-Pure One. Let me enter the church. Allow me to behold the Wood upon which the Lord was crucified in the flesh, shedding His Blood for the redemption of sinners, and also for me. Be my witness before Your Son that I will never defile my body again with the impurity of fornication. As soon as I have seen the Cross of your Son, I will renounce the world, and go wherever you lead me.” After her prayer and her promise she was finally able to enter the church; no force stopped her. After she gazed upon our Lords cross, she entered the Egyptian desert to live out her life in solitude and repentance.

47 years later a holy monk, Saint Zozimas saw a figure of a person wandering the desert. She called him by name, telling him not to come closer because she was a woman and naked. Saint Zosimas threw her his cloak and asked her to bless him due to her holiness; she refused as he was a priest who carried the body and blood of Christ and commanded him to bless her. After giving her the Eucharist, Mary repeated the words of Saint Symeon, “Lord, now let Your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen Your salvation.” and asked Zosimas to return in a year’s time. The next year he returned to find her body; she had died the night Father Zosimas gave her communion and written her story in the sand, the very story you are reading.

No one knew Saint Mary’s story save Saint Zozimas after her death. She preached to no one, never led a Bible study or witnessed to a wayward soul when she lived, yet her prayers before the throne of God have reached millions. The church has celebrated her life every Great Lent for 1600 years. She had no family and she never worked as anything but a prostitute. A single soul gazing upon the cross and then dying in the desert.

If her life makes no sense in this world, her life is completely fulfilled in the future Kingdom of God. As Bishop Zizioulas explains, “The future of the Kingdom gives meaning to the present, the past does not. That is why we pray ‘Thy Kingdom come’ and remember Christ’s second coming in the Liturgy.” How do we remember the future of the second coming? Christ shows us in His last supper “Every time you do this you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” When the fullness of the church gathers to celebrate the Eucharist, the Kingdom of God is no longer a far off wistful fantasy but here and now, ushering in the fullness of Divine Life himself! The Church celebrates the wedding feast of the Lamb every Liturgy with the angels, with Saint Mary, with Moses and Elijah who stood with Him at His transfiguration, with Jeremiah who interceded for the Maccabees from Heavenly Glory. The Eucharist is Life and the only way life is lived: in Christ.

Saint Mary of Egypt wandered the desert for 47 years waiting to commune with Christ in His Kingdom. Her life is only judged by the Kingdom, for she offers all judgement to Christ as Bishop Zizioulas explains, “The person who lives in the Eucharist and through the Eucharist … gets into the habit of placing himself, his works and history itself under the light and the judgment of the Kingdom, always and in everything seeking its ultimate meaning (“Seek ye first the Kingdom of heaven and its righteousness” [in other words, its love], Mt. 6:33), of leaving the final judgment of other people in the hands of God, and of seeing in all things the ultimate destiny of their incorporation and survival in Christ unto ‘the age which does not end or grow old.’”¹

In the Russian Novel Oblomov, Ilya asks himself, “What am I doing with my life? Why, I am in love with Olga!” We may ask the same question, “What am I doing?!?” And answer with Saint Mary, “Χριστός Ανέστη!”

Christ is risen. The answer to every question and regret. Glorify Him.

1. Zizioulas, John D. The Eucharist and the Kingdom of God p. 105 – 106 ↩︎