Page 50 - AlNashra issue 2 - 2023
P. 50
49 Issue 2 - 2023
them. This light was not ordinary material, like The saint wrote this book in Sinai, Egypt, where
the light of the chandelier or the light of the sun, he lived, and in the book the saint spoke about
but was the glory of the uncreated God. The the virtues, because fasting is a battleground for
power of God or the grace of God, enveloped spiritual struggles and the acquisition of virtues.
and overwhelmed the disciples at that time. In He drew these virtues in the form of a ladder,
this context, a question arises: The Holy Church which we ascend, step by step, and reach, at its
celebrates Saint Gregory Palamas with Philip the peak, the kingdom of heaven.
Apostle on one day every year, the fourteenth of
November. Hence, why did the Church return On the fifth Sunday of Great Lent, we
and choose for St. Gregory Palamas, in addition commemorate Saint Mary of Egypt. She comes,
to the fourteenth of November, another day to as her name indicates, from Egypt. As a young
remember him, which is the second Sunday of woman, she lived her youth in fornication,
Great Lent, and to remind us of his teaching adultery, and debauchery. It happened once
about the uncreated divine light and the that she traveled from Alexandria to Jerusalem
uncreated divine grace? This question brings us with pilgrims on their way to the holy places.
to the third Sunday of Lent. She did not travel to seek pilgrimage, but to
On the third Sunday of fasting, we commemorate indulge in debauchery and immorality. When
the Holy Cross and venerate it. Why? So that we she reached the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,
remember, while we are in the period of fasting, she tried to enter, but she failed. She felt as if
the cause of our salvation, which is the cross of there was a force preventing her from entering.
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Our strength She returned to herself and remembered her
does not fail while we are on the path (the path sins, and she decided, from that moment, to
of fasting), but rather we renew it in order to repent and change her life completely and
end the path with the same momentum with radically. Therefore, she left the actual world
which we started it. and her past life and went to the wilderness of
On the fourth Sunday, we commemorate St. John Jordan in Palestine, where she spent the rest of
Climacus. This saint was called Climacus, after her entire life. Mary remained unknown until
his famous book, “The Ladder of Divine Ascent.” God revealed to her a monk named Zosimas, for
