In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
This week of Great Lent is dedicated to the remembrance of St. John of the Ladder, the remarkable abbot of Mount Sinai, where the monastery that St. John headed still exists, with very strict discipline. Many ascetics went out from this monastery into the world for various circumstances and reasons, and around each of them a circle of people seeking salvation formed. On the basis of the vast spiritual heritage of the Sinai monastery, a certain body of patristic texts took shape that help us, modern people, too, to study all the difficulty of what is called spiritual warfare — all the complexity of the war a person wages against his own sin.
This war is far more difficult than war against an external enemy. To conquer oneself, to sort out one’s thoughts, to cleanse the soul of sin, to become so firm and strong as never again to let sin into the soul — this is a battle that in its intensity exceeds any human battle, any earthly conflict in which we give our last strength to defeat the enemy. And we must remember that the main victory we strive for in life is victory over ourselves.
We also commemorate St. Mary of Egypt. This week, on Thursday, in memory of Mary of Egypt, the entire canon of St. Andrew of Crete will be read. This long service with the reading of the canon is called the Standing of St. Mary, and so today our thoughts naturally turn to St. Mary of Egypt. We know well that she was a woman of loose life who enjoyed life in the rich and beautiful city of Alexandria. But once, finding herself by chance in the Holy Land, she felt that the Lord would not let her under the vaults of the Church of His Tomb, and in an instant she decided to change her life.
There were many holy places in Jerusalem, the chief of which was the Tomb of the Lord. There were many God-wise pastors and archpastors. But Mary chose a completely special path — not by herself, of course, but moved by God’s Providence. Mary left Jerusalem. She stopped visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, stopped venerating all the holy places of the city of Jerusalem and, crossing the Jordan, went alone into the terrible desert — where it was unknown what she could eat, where it was unknown how she could escape poisonous snakes and wild beasts such as lions, which then still lived in the Middle East. A fragile woman crossed the Jordan and went away from everyone, leaving churches and monasteries behind, even renouncing communion. She went into the desert — just think! — so that no one but God would be before her any longer.
St. Mary of Egypt lived this way for the rest of her life, several decades. Just a year before her death, the monk Zosimas from the monastery of St. Gerasimus on the Jordan (which, incidentally, still exists) went beyond the Jordan, as monks did in the first week of Great Lent, to pass this period in the desert in a special way, and met Mary of Egypt there alive and well. Zosimas could not understand whom he had met — a human being or an angel. How could this woman — without prayer in church, without receiving the Mysteries of Christ, without the help of spiritual fathers, without the help of brothers and sisters in the spirit — how could she, in complete isolation, attain such holiness that Zosimas was amazed to see Mary cross the Jordan on the water? What does this mean? It means that there was no longer any boundary between her physical nature and angelic nature; like an angel, she overcame the laws of human nature. No earthly gravity! And as a result of what? As a result of prayer in solitude, sincere prayer that lasted not a week, not a month or two, but her whole life. It was this prayer that made the sinner Mary a great saint, whom the Church offers as an example to each of us. An example of how from the abyss of sin — through the podvig of separating oneself from the world, through the podvig of solitude — one can ascend to angelic heights.
Today our Fatherland is going through difficult trials. You know there is a very great threat of a pandemic of a terrible virus. I receive news from different countries, but I was especially struck by a letter from an Orthodox woman in Italy. I repeat: the letter made a terrible impression on me. She writes: “Vladyka, I understand very well the people of Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities. It seems to you that this terrible epidemic is somewhere far away, and it is unknown when it will come to you or whether it will be so terrible. We thought exactly the same two weeks ago. It seemed to us that there would be no epidemic in Rome. But today we all sit at home; the morgues and even stadiums are filled with corpses, which cannot even be cremated. People are dying as they can only die in times of a terrible epidemic. We often go without food; with great fear we walk to the nearest store where we can buy groceries and immediately return home; and if we do not return, we face reprisals from the police. We could not have imagined that we would have such a life,” — and then words addressed to all of us: “just as you cannot imagine it today.” And why can’t everyone imagine it? Because, by God’s mercy, practically no one in any family has yet died. If that happens, everyone will imagine it in an instant, and we will panic as well. But the Church calls today, before there are victims in our families, to take upon ourselves the obligation to strictly observe all the instructions issued by the sanitary authorities in Russia.
The example of Mary of Egypt testifies that one can be saved even without attending church. After all, I have given you not some artificial example, but the example of a saint whose memory we celebrate this week. A saint who left all churches and monasteries and withdrew into the desert.
Today there are no deserts in Moscow, St. Petersburg or our other cities. But there is a place that can become a desert — our own home. Let us make our homes a desert; let us offer fervent prayer there. Let us take upon ourselves the podvig of not leaving our homes, as Mary of Egypt took upon herself the podvig of not leaving the desert. And she, surely, also wanted to eat and drink! Whereas in modern cities it is possible to obtain both drink and food without leaving one’s desert.
This is exactly how we must live now. Do not listen to any other sermons, including those from unwise clergy — listen to what the Patriarch has told you today, and not on his own, but from the great ascetic podvig of St. Mary of Egypt, who saved both body and soul by going into the desert, into complete isolation from the people around her.
It is no accident that the memory of Mary of Egypt coincided with the introduction of the quarantine connected with the spread of the coronavirus. Nothing with God is accidental. Everything happened precisely in these days, so that we, looking at the podvig of Mary of Egypt, might learn how one can be saved outside the church, in complete solitude. Only the main thing is to work out one’s salvation and not, forgive me, fool around, as do those who devote even the days the state has given for concentration, calm and a certain reorganization of life to outdoor entertainment, barbecues, music and everything else, thinking that people have simply been given a vacation. It is not a vacation! It is a time for concentrating one’s thoughts and putting in order one’s family life and relations with colleagues, relatives and loved ones. So that each person may develop and adopt a model of safe interaction — just as in the remote desert Mary of Egypt developed a model of safe interaction with a world infected by sin. Mary fought the devil, who struck human souls, and today we must fight the forces of evil that strike our physical bodies, and through them our souls.
Therefore I call on you, my dear ones, in the coming days, until there is a special Patriarchal blessing, to refrain from visiting churches, and if anyone says anything to you, remind them of the example of Mary of Egypt. We have no other answer, because we love our churches. For 51 years I have preached from the ambo, calling people to come to church and to overcome the pull of their own evil will and external circumstances. I have devoted my whole life to this call! I hope you understand how hard it is for me today to say: refrain from visiting churches; and I would probably never have said it were it not for the amazing, saving example of St. Mary of Egypt, who during this very week is glorified by the Church as a great ascetic who even in her earthly life took on an angelic nature. Far from monasteries and churches, in solitude, in a distant desert, St. Mary both saved her soul and gave her physical body strength to live in incredibly difficult conditions for exactly as many years as the Lord allowed.
Through her prayers may the Lord preserve us all from infections and illnesses. But above all, may her example help us to realize the importance of solitude in our personal deserts, in our apartments. Let us take upon ourselves a particle of the podvig of Mary of Egypt in order to protect ourselves, our relatives and loved ones, and perhaps also to feel the podvig of the great ascetic who lived most of her life in solitude only because she believed in the Lord and obeyed His voice. We believe that today too the Lord calls us to follow her path, even in the conditions of modern megacities. Amen.