Transformation
The Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt
Oops!
Lent, above all, is a call for self-reflection — a time to step back and honestly ask, How am I doing?
This Sunday causes me to pause more than most. Because I find myself living between two identities, and I’m not sure they belong together.
On one hand, I am your spiritual father. My calling is to shepherd this flock, to form Christ in each of you, to struggle as Paul struggled — pouring myself out so the Good News reshapes how we live.
On the other hand, I am your parish administrator. My job is to maintain the building, grow our numbers, manage endowments, steward our time and talents and treasures. To make sure the institution continues.
One role asks me to give myself away. The other asks me to manage what we have. One looks toward heaven. The other keeps the lights on.
And I’ll be honest with you — I feel the tension of that every single week.
Ugh!
But here is what troubles me even more: what if the institution itself can become an obstacle to salvation?
That’s the uncomfortable question this Sunday forces me to face.
Because today we hear about a woman who was saved entirely outside the institution. St. Mary of Egypt never had a spiritual father. She communed only once in her life. She never read a Bible. She entered a church exactly twice.
By every institutional measure, she had nothing.
And yet — God chose her to be the teacher.
St. Zosimas was everything the institution could produce. He was an accomplished priest-monk, versed in scripture, theology, canon law, the divine services. He was so spiritually accomplished that he actually prayed — and I find this striking — “Is there anyone who has surpassed me?” He genuinely wondered if anyone had.
God’s answer was to send him into the desert to find a woman he’d never heard of.
When Zosimas finally catches up to Mary, something remarkable happens. He, the priest-monk — the one with the vestments, the credentials, the ordination — falls at her feet and asks her for a blessing.
Do you hear the reversal? The one who has everything the church can offer is kneeling before the one who has none of it.
Aha!
So what does Mary have, if not the institution?
She has her encounter with Christ — and she let it change everything.
Her story is not a gentle one. She gave herself to sensuality from the age of twelve. Decades of it. She boarded a ship to Jerusalem at twenty-nine, paying her fare with her body. When she arrived and tried to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, an invisible force stopped her at the door. She couldn’t go in. She wept outside, and she prayed to the Theotokos.
If you let me in, I will go wherever you send me.
She was let in. She venerated the cross. And then she walked into the Jordan desert — alone — and spent forty-seven years fighting her passions.
No priest. No sacraments. No institution. Just her, the desert, and God.
And when Zosimas found her, she was walking on water.
The institution didn’t save Mary. Her radical, unmediated surrender to Christ did. The encounter transformed her so completely that she became what scripture teaches — a living Bible, walking in the flesh.
Whee!
But here is the good news — and it is genuinely good: Mary’s story is not a rejection of the institution. Rather, it’s a fulfillment of what the institution is for.
Look at where Lent has been leading us.
On the first Sunday, Phillip says to Nathanael, “Come and see.” We are invited into an encounter.
On the second Sunday, Gregory Palamas tells us that this encounter is not merely with a holy man — it is a real encounter with God himself.
At the midpoint, we finally encounter Christ, though he’s hanging on the cross. We’re confused. Here’s a God who suffers, and we don’t know what to make of it.
On the fourth Sunday, John Climacus tells us Christ’s suffering is not pointless; it’s how death is defeated. He also shows us that our suffering is not pointless: each struggle is a rung on a ladder that ascends to heaven.
And now, today, we see where the ladder leads.
Like us, Mary of Egypt was invited to come and see, so she boarded a boat. When she was prevented from entering the church, she realized that it was God she was encountering. When she was finally allowed to venerate the cross, she encountered a suffering God. She responded by entering the Jordan desert to ascend Climacus’s Ladder of Divine Ascent. And, as she climbed each rung, she was transformed.
The story of St. Mary of Egypt is the Lenten journey. And it shows us how that journey can be transformative.
So, the institution — the services, the fasting, the prayers, the sacraments — these are not ends in themselves. They are the on-ramp to exactly this kind of encounter. The goal was never the building. The goal was always be transformed like Mary was
Yeah!
So where does that leave us?
I’ll speak for myself first: this Sunday convicts me. My ordination calls me to be more like Mary — less anxious about worldly affairs, more consumed with leading each of you toward a genuine encounter with Christ. Less preoccupied with rules and regulations, more given to mercy, grace, and love. I have a long way to go.
But the question isn’t only mine. It belongs to all of us.
This week, I want to invite you to sit with one honest question: What is getting between me and my encounter with Christ?
For some of us, it might be comfort — we’ve made our faith safe and predictable, and we haven’t let it cost us anything in a while.
For some, it might be distraction — the noise of daily life has gotten so loud that we’ve stopped listening for God’s voice.
For some, it might even be religion itself — we’ve become so focused on doing the right things that we’ve forgotten why we do them.
Mary’s path is not our path exactly. God is not calling most of us into the Jordan desert. But God is calling each of us to the same fundamental act she performed outside the Holy Sepulcher: to fall on our knees, to ask for entry, and to mean it.
If you let me in, I will go wherever you send me.
That is the Lenten prayer. That is what this season has been building toward.
The door is open. Come and see.
Amen.