Page 51 - AlNashra issue 2 - 2023

it was habitual for monks to leave monasteries we seek to be sanctified and sanctify everything

during Lent and wander in the desert in search around us. This conclusion is reinforced by what

of solitude and more calm. Zosimas was one of we pray during fasting or during the preparation

those monks, and it happened that he met Mary. period for fasting. At the dawn of the Sunday

She said to him: “Do not come near me, for I of Cheesefare, we pray: “Adam was driven out

am a woman.” Forty years had passed since her of Paradise, because in disobedience he had

presence in the wilderness, and her clothes were eaten food; but Moses was granted the vision
shabby and worn out, so he took off his robe of God, because he had cleansed the eyes of
to cover her up. Zosimas then learnt that she his soul by fasting. If then we long to dwell in
was Mary of Egypt and he gave her the Body Paradise, let us abstain from all needless food,
and Blood of the Lord, as he was a priest, and and if we desire to see God, let us like Moses fast
promised that he would return to her next year to for forty days. With sincerity let us persevere in
prayer and intercession; let us still the passions
give her again the Holy Communion. Next year, of our soul; let us subdue the rebellious instincts
he returned to her in fulfillment of his promise, of the flesh. With light step let us set out upon

but he found her dead. He performed the funeral the path to heaven, where the choirs of angels
prayer over her and buried her. This is, in short, with never-silent voice sing the praises of the
the biography of St. Mary the Egyptian. As for undivided Trinity; and there we shall behold the
us, what matters to us about her biography is surpassing beauty of the Master. O Son of God,
that she became a model of repentance and, Giver of Life, in Thee we set our hope: count us
through her repentance, a model of holiness and worthy of a place there with the angelic hosts, at

living with God. the intercessions of the Mother who bore Thee,

Therefore, from all the Sundays that we have O Christ, of the apostles and the martyrs and of

presented, whether they are those that prepare all the saints.”3 Our Orthodox Church’s hymns

for fasting or the Sundays of fasting, and the and worships, in their Byzantine liturgical form,

meanings, lessons, and proverbs that these have an educational and doctrinal dimension.

Sundays bear, we conclude that fasting is a We can see the author’s didactic comparison in

luminous resurrectional path, in which we

remember that everything belongs to God, so 3- https://stioctca.orthodoxws.com/files/Triodion/Forgiveness-Sun-
day-Readings--Hymns-1.pdf

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