The Fifth Sunday of Great Lent: Sunday of St Mary of Egypt
Categories: orthodox-life, hymns, lives-of-saints, great-lent
Date: 31 March 2012 23:11:15
Kontakion - Tone 3:
Having been a sinful woman,
you became through repentance a Bride of Christ.
Having attained angelic life,
you defeated demons with the weapon of the Cross.
Therefore, most glorious Mary, you are a Bride of the Kingdom!
Today, the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church [only 2 weeks to Pascha! -- one week after 'western' Easter this year -- how the time has flown...], is dedicated to the remembrance of St Mary of Egypt (a blessed Feast Day to Unordered if you are still around!), a prostitute who turned to asceticism, and a great model of repentance for us. Her Feast Day is commemorated on April 1, and that date and the fifth Sunday of Great Lent are one and the same this year.
I am not at church today, after not getting to sleep until after the second time 2am rolled around (daylight savings ended for us in NSW this morning), and waking up with rather severe stomach pains and diarrhoea. Overnight I did get to hear the interesting Spark, a 55 minute technology and culture program from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation through our own ABC Radio National at 1am, and I read a bit more of Agatha Christie's N or M? which helped pass the time...
On the Thursday night just passed, the fifth Thursday of Great Lent, we had a two-and-a-half hour service (if it were chanted rather than read as we did it would have been longer!) consisting of the entire Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete and the reading of the lengthy, but amazingly wonderful in seeing God's Saints and how a life can be turned around towards God with repentance, Life of St Mary of Egypt, which we took in turns to read 2 pages of. If time allows, I can but recommend it as a profitable reading at any time, but especually during Great Lent; or the earlier link at the top of this post has a shorter life provided. The Canon of St Andrew is a comprehensive and beautiful look at our salvation history through the Old and New Testaments, using the events and people therein to stir us to repentance and to provide examples for us to emulate or ignore. I will try and write about it later and provide some samples, as much as for myself to recall them as anything else. It is long, it is intense in its depth, and it is so very beautiful, with the words in the hymns being ones I can truly claim as my own to say.
On this Sunday of St Mary of Egypt, may our God help us all to turn to him and give a life worthy of His name, and may we through His help continue to journey towards Pascha, the Feast of Feasts.