St. Mary of Egypt — The Catholic Saint Who Couldn't Walk Through a Church Door

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47 years, alone, in the desert, no food beyond
what the wilderness itself could offer. No

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shelter, no other human voice for most of that
time. Her clothes rotted off her body. Her

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hair grew long and turned white under the sun.
Her skin darkened and weathered until the monk,

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who eventually found her, could barely recognize
her as a person. She chose this. At 29 years

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old, after a life most people would call beyond
any hope of redemption, she walked into that

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desert and she did not come back. It started
in Alexandria, Egypt, one of the greatest cities

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in the ancient world, with a 12-year-old girl
who ran away from home and decided she was

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going to live entirely for herself.

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Hi, my name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday
Saints, episode 12. If you have been with

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us since the beginning, thank you. 12 weeks,
12 saints, and this one may be the most unexpected

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story I've told yet. If you are new here, welcome
to our porch. Stick around. We drop a new saint

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every Thursday. This is the story of Saint Mary
of Egypt. She is honored and celebrated in

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the Catholic Church. the Eastern Orthodox Church,
and the Coptic Church, which is the ancient

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Christian church of Egypt, one of the oldest
Christian communities in the world. Across

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those three traditions, she is one of the most
celebrated saints in Christian history. Here

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in the West, the US, most Catholics have never
heard her name. Well, her name was Mary. She

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was born sometime in the fifth century. She
ran away from home at the age of 12. She spent

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the next 17 years in Alexandria, living exactly
the life you are probably imagining, and she

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never pretended otherwise. Then, one afternoon,
at the door of a church in Jerusalem, something

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stopped her cold. Not a lock, not a crowd. Something
she could not push past or explain. Something

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that sent her running toward the Jordan River
and into the desert. What she became in that

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desert over the next 47 years is one of the
most extraordinary things I have come across.

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We start in Alexandria, sometime in the fifth
or early sixth century. The exact dates are

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debated, but the broad strokes of her story
are consistent across every account that it

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survives. Alexandria in that era was one of
the great cities of the known world. A major

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Mediterranean port, densely populated, Sophisticated,
you had commerce, philosophy, art, religion,

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poverty, and every kind of pleasure crowded
together on the same narrow streets. It was

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a place where a person could disappear into
the noise and live almost any life they choose.

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Mary ran away from home at the age of 12. She
never tells us why in the account that survives,

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only that she left her parents, went to Alexandria,
and began a certain kind of life. In her own

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words, she was completely consumed by sensual
pleasure for the next 17 years, not primarily

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as a profession driven by desperation or poverty.
She is specific about this. She often refused

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money. She wanted as many men as possible, and
she pursued that life with an energy she later

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described as a kind of fire she could not control.
I wanna be careful here. She never sanitized

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her own story and I will not sanitize it either,
but reducing her to a travesty would miss something

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important. What the accounts consistently describe
as a woman of remarkable intensity and will,

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someone who lived fully and pursued what she
wanted without apology. That quality did not

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disappear after her conversion. It simply went
somewhere else. So for 17 years she lived

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this way and then more or less on a whim, she
decided to join a group of pilgrims sailing

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to Jerusalem for the feast of the exaltation
of the Holy Cross. Now, not out of devotion,

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out of curiosity, and because there were a lot
of young men on that boat. Now they are in

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Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
The church built over the traditional site

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of the crucification and resurrection of Jesus,
one of the most sacred places in the Christian

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world. Mary joined the crowd of pilgrims moving
toward the entrance. She had no particular

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spiritual agenda. She was just curious the way
a tourist is curious. She moved with the crowd

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toward the door and she could not enter. The
door was not locked. There was no physical

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barrier. She could see other people walking
through without difficulty. She simply could

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not make herself cross the threshold. She later
described it as an invisible force, like a

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hand pressed hard against her chest, holding
her back while everyone else flowed past her

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in the church. She tried again and again, each
time the same result. The crowd moved around

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her and through the door she could not cross.
She stood there. for a long time as the understanding

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of what was happening slowly settled on her.
Not as theological conclusion, as a physical

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reality she could not deny. She was not being
held back by a locked door or a crowd, she

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was being held back by what she was. She went
to a corner of the entrance hall where an icon

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of the Virgin Mary hung on the wall and she
wept. For a long time she wept. Then she prayed,

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the broken, halting prayer of a woman who had
not prayed seriously in seventeen years, asking

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the Virgin to intercede for her, asking to
be allowed in, promising, though she was not

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yet sure what the promise meant, that she would
go wherever she was directed. When she finished

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praying, she walked back to the door. She went
through. She stayed in the church for a long

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time. When she came out, she heard or felt or
somehow received a voice telling her to cross

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the Jordan River and go into the desert. She
had three coins in her pocket. She bought three

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loaves of bread. She found the Jordan River,
crossed it and walked into the wilderness.

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She was 29 years old. Now, Here is where most
people's imaginations fail, because what comes

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next is so far outside ordinary human experience
that it's almost impossible to picture it fully.

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She was in the desert for 47 years, alone, no
community, no monastery, no other human being

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for the vast majority of that time. The three
loaves of bread she bought in Jerusalem lasted

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her 17 years. She is specific about this in
a way that no one else has offered a natural

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explanation for. After that, she whatever
sparse wild plants grew in that stretch of

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wilderness east of the Jordan, which was very
little. Her clothes rotted away, her hair grew

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long and turned white from the sun and the years,
her skin became dark and deeply weathered.

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The woman who had spent 17 years in Alexandria
where physical appearance was everything became

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in the description of the monk who eventually
found her a gaunt white haired figure moving

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through the desert like something between a
person and a vision. And she struggled enormously

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for the first 17 years in the desert. She was
tormented by the same desires and appetites

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she had spent her previous life indulging. The
memories came at her constantly and without

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mercy. The smell of wine, the noise and heat
of Alexandria's streets, the pull of every

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pleasure she had walked away from. She fought
them with prayer, with tears, with the words

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of scripture she had heard only in fragments
before her conversion and somehow now knew

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them by heart. This is one of the most honest
accounts of what real conversion actually costs

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that I have ever come across. She did not walk
into that desert and immediately become peaceful

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and holy. No, she walked into the desert and
spent 17 years in open warfare with herself,

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with her memory, her desire, and the life she
had chosen to leave behind. Then after those

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17 years of struggle, something changed. She
describes it as a great peace descending.

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The passions quieted, not all at once, in a
single dramatic moment, but gradually and then

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completely. The battle was over. What came after
was something she struggled to put into words.

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She simply lived, alone with God, in the desert,
for thirty more years. About 47 years after

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Mary first walked into the wilderness, a monk
named Zosimas was doing what the monks of

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his community did every Lent, walking deep into
the desert to fast and pray in solitude. He

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was an experienced monk, serious about his faith,
so not a man easily given to seeing things

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that were not there. He saw a figure moving
among the rocks in the distance, emaciated.

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white-haired, barely clothed in the remnants
of what had once been garments. He called

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out, and the figure fled. He chased her, calling
that he was a monk and meant no harm. Eventually,

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she stopped. She called him by his name. Note,
a name he had never told her. What followed

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was one of the most unusual conversations in
the recorded history of Christian spirituality.

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This educated, devout, experienced monk sat
with a woman who had not spoken to another

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human being in decades and found himself in
the presence of someone whose knowledge of

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scripture and depth of prayer went beyond his
own. Someone who had arrived through the hardest

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possible road at a place he was still trying
to reach. She told him her story, all of it,

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Alexandria, the boat, the church door that would
not open, the 47 years, she held nothing back.

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Then she asked him to come back the following
year on Holy Thursday and bring her the Eucharist,

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which she had not received since the day of
her conversion. He came back as she had asked.

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She walked across the Jordan River to meet him.
He actually watched her walk on the water

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with his own eyes. She received communion.
She cried. She asked him to return one more

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year and bring a burial cloth. When Zosimas
returned the third time, after traveling for

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20 days into the desert to the spot where he
had first found her, he found her body lying

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there peacefully. Near her head, written in
the sand in letters he could read, was a short

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message asking him to bury her there. It also
told him when she had died, the very night

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she had received communion from him, a full
year before. So she had died immediately after

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receiving the Eucharist. She was illiterate,
but the inscription was legible. That detail

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is noted explicitly in the ancient account as
one of the miracles of her death. Her body

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showed no decay. He did not know how to dig
a grave alone in that hard ground, and as odd

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as this sounds, a lion appeared and helped him
dig. When the work was finished, the lion walked

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away into the desert and Zosimas returned to
the monastery. Whether you take every miraculous

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detail of this story literally, or understand
some of them as later embellishments, What

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remains consistent across the ancient accounts
is this. A woman named Mary lived alone in

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the Judean desert for nearly five decades. She
was found by a monk, told him her full story

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without softening it, died, and was buried by
the monk. All right, back on the porch. So

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the thing I keep returning to with Mary, and
likely you are probably returning to this as

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well, is that invisible hand at the church
door. So she did not go to Jerusalem seeking

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conversion and she was not in a season of spiritual
searching. She had not been slowly building

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toward a change of life. She was 29 years old.
She had been living the same way since she

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was 12. And from her own account, she had no
particular plans to stop. But something stopped

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her anyway. Not gently, not as a quiet suggestion.
as an unmovable reality she could not argue

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with, push through, or ignore. I think a lot
of us have met versions of that door. Am I

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right? I the thing you kept trying that kept
not working, the path that kept closing in

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front of you even when you could not see why,
the place where your own will finally ran into

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something stronger than itself. Mary's response
to that moment is worth sitting with carefully.

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She did not get up angry and leave. She did
not decide the universe was against her and

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give up. She went to a corner and she cried
honestly, openly without pretending she had

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anything together. And she asked for help. When
the door finally opened, she walked through

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it. And then she walked all the way into the
desert. That last part is the one that both

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inspires and humbles me. Because most of us,
when a closed door finally opens, want the

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comfortable version of what is on the other
side, the version that does not cost too much.

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Mary got a voice pointing her toward the Jordan
River and the wilderness, and she went. I've

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been sitting with that question. What am I doing
with the doors in my own life that will not

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open? Not the ones I am still shoving against
with everything I have. But the ones I have

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finally quietly admitted are closed, permanently
closed. Am I standing in the corner weeping

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honestly and asking for direction? Or am I still
in the entrance hall arguing with the door

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trying to force it open, resenting it, and
refusing to consider that it might be trying

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to send me somewhere I do not yet want to go?
Well, that leads into the practical challenge

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this week. This week, it is simple. and difficult.
Think of one door in your life that will not

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open, not so you can try to force it one more
time, but so you can ask, genuinely and honestly,

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whether the door closed might be telling you
something, and whether there is a desert on

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the other side of it that you have been refusing
to see. And now it's time for the closing prayer.

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Lord, thank you for Mary of Egypt. Thank you
that you stopped a woman at a door she could

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not cross, not to shame her, but to redirect
her. Thank you that 47 years in the desert

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produced something a lifetime in Alexandria
could never have produced. For everyone listening

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who is standing at that door that will not open,
give them Mary's honesty. Give them the courage

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to stop pushing, to go to the corner, to cry
a little. and to ask for direction. And give

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them the willingness to go wherever the voice
points, even when it points somewhere hard

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and lonely. And for anyone who believes their
past is too far gone, their history too complicated,

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their choice is too many and too public to ever
be redeemed, give them Mary, a woman who told

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her entire story without editing a single word
of it. and who God met exactly where she was.

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We love you, even at the doors that will not
open. Amen. One more thing before we go. Mary

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of Egypt is the patron saint of converts for
obvious reasons, but she is also the patron

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saint of chastity, which is either deeply ironic
or deeply appropriate depending on how you

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look at it. and she is invoked against skin
diseases and fevers because she spent 47 years

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completely exposed to the elements of the desert
and somehow survived it. In the Eastern Orthodox

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and Coptic traditions, she is one of the most
celebrated saints. The fifth Sunday of Great

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Lent is actually called the Sunday of Saint
Mary of Egypt. Her story is read aloud in the

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services. She is not an obscure figure there.
She is central. But in the Western Catholic

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Church, she is far less known. And that is a
real loss. Because her story says something

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about the reach and the cost of grace that very
few other saints' stories say quite as directly

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or as unflinchingly. Her feast day in the Roman
Catholic calendar is April 2nd. The woman who

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ran away from home at 12, who spent 17 years
in Alexandria doing what she did, who stood

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at a door she could not cross at 29 and who
then disappeared into the desert for the rest

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of her life is still being prayed to 17 centuries
later. Well, that is episode 12 of Everyday

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Saints. If Mary's story moved you, share it
with just one person. Someone who might need

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to hear that a door that will not open is not
always a punishment. Sometimes it is a direction.

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Leave a review if you have a minute, it definitely
helps more people find the show. Next week,

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we go back to a name most of you will recognize
immediately and a story that is far stranger

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and far more human than anything you were taught
about them in school. I'm John O'Connor, thanks

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for sitting on the porch with me and I will
see you next week.