The biography of this saint was written by the Patriarch of Jerusalem St. Sophronius. A priest-monk, the elder Zosimus, departed once during the Lent in the Jordan desert, a distance of twelve days.

Suddenly he saw a human being, dry, naked in the body, with hair as white as snow, who immediately began to run away from Zosim's gaze. The old man ran for a long time until that human opportunity fell into the stream and shouted: "Avo Zosime, forgive me for God's sake, I can not turn to you, because I am a naked woman!"

Then Zosim threw his overcoat at her and she called him. The old man was frightened by the sound of his name uttered by the lips of that unknown woman. At his long insistence, the woman told him her biography.

She was born in Egypt and from the age of twelve began to live debauchery in Alexandria and spent seventeen years in lewdness. Persecuted by the fornication of the body, she sat on a ship sailing to Jerusalem one day. When she arrived in the Holy City, she wanted to enter the church and worship the Precious Cross, but some invisible force held her and did not allow her to enter.

In great fear she looked at the icon of the Most Holy Mother of God on the porch of the church, praying to the Most Pure to allow her to enter and kiss the Precious Cross, confessing her sinfulness and impurity, and promising that after this he would go where he would lead her. The Mother of God. She was then allowed to enter the church. After kissing the Precious Cross, she went out again on the porch in front of the icon and thanked the Most Holy Mother of God, but at that moment she heard a voice: "If you cross the Jordan, you will find peace!" She immediately bought three loaves and went to Jordan, where she arrived. the same evening. The next day she took communion in the monastery of St. John crossed the river.

She lived in the desert for forty-eight years, in great agony, in fear, in the struggle with passionate thoughts like wild beasts. She ate cabbage. Now she asked St. Zosimus to come to the shores of the Jordan next year and bring her Communion, promising to come and take communion. The following year, Abba Zosim came to the shore carrying, Holy Communion, and he wondered how the saint would cross the Jordan. At that moment he saw in the moonlight that she came to the river, crossed it and went on the water as if dry. When he partook of it, he asked him to come to the same stream next year where they first met.

Abba Zosimus went and found her dead body at that place, and above the head was an inscription: "Bury, Abbot Zosimus, at this place the body of the humble Mary, hand over the dust to the dust, I introduced myself on April XNUMX, the night of the saving "The suffering of Christ, after communion with the Divine Mysteries." From this inscription Abba Zosim found out first her name, and secondly the terrible miracle that she had reached this stream the previous year, the same night when she received communion, to which he had to travel for twenty days.

This is how Zosim buried the body of the miraculous saint Mary of Egypt. And when he returned to the monastery, he told the whole story of her life and the miracle he had seen from her. Thus the Lord glorified the repentant sinner. St. Mary is also mentioned in the fifth week of Lent. In those days the Church presents it to the faithful as an example of repentance. He fell asleep in the Lord around 530.