This fifth Sunday of Great Lent concludes a week of increased effort in prayer. On Wednesday evening we read again the great hymn of repentance – the Canon of St Andrew of Crete. In monasteries and some parish churches the life of St Mary of Egypt was read aloud during that service. St Mary’s life is a colourful example of a dramatic repentance. Although I would guess that none of us have experienced a repentance as forceful as hers, repentance is basic for all of us in our relationship with God. I’d like to think about how her life illustrates this. I’m assuming that most people know the story – if not it’s easy to find on the internet.

Mary spent forty-seven years in the strictest asceticism, completely alone in the desert. But paradoxically, we see in the life of this solitary restored relationships – relationships with God, with people, with self and with creation. Her own restored relationship with God is evident in the outward signs of her holiness: she has the gift of insight; she knows the Scriptures although she cannot read. She has survived in conditions that would not normally support human life.

But there are other people in the story too. A key character is the monk Zosimas. Up to the time when he meets Mary in the depths of the desert he has led an exemplary monastic life in community, but is afflicted with “the curse of comparison”, something which always divides people. He’s tempted by the thought that no-one has exceeded his ascetic feats, so he can’t escape from a feeling of superiority to his brother monks. He has prayed to be delivered from this, and is led by God to his meeting with Mary, whose extreme asceticism - and holiness - puts paid to his delusion.

The meeting between Mary and Zosimas is a charming part of the story. They both fall on the ground beseeching the other to bless them. Mary astonishes Zosimas by calling him by his name, and then by insisting that he should bless her because he is a priest. Finally, he persuades her to bless him and they both stand up and talk. So Zosimas’ formal rank of monk and priest provide no guarantees where holiness is concerned!

The Epistle appointed for Mary’s Sunday underlines this: For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. The life in Christ is characterised by restored relationships between people – relationships where comparison and rank are put aside: what counts is a shared life in Christ.

Mary’s life also gives us examples of restored relationships with the created world. Gloriously, after her death a friendly lion appears to help Zosimas dig her grave and then goes back into the desert.

But what about a restored relationship with herself? Mary has “a past”. One could say an exaggerated stereotype of a sinful past. But the story illustrates fundamental aspects of the experience of repentance for all of us. It gives us a lively example of metanoia, a complete 180 degree change of direction towards God. For many people there is a decisive moment of conversion, when we acknowledge that life has become unmanageable, that we have to hand everything over to God or spiral into destruction. It can be a recognition that the way we are living is a mask - the way I’m living now is not fundamentally who I am. Even if we don’t have a radical conversion experience, Christianity involves a continual effort of metanoia, of returning to our identity as children of God.

But, the point of the story would be completely lost if Mary’s past was airbrushed away. God’s grace can transform everything that we are. A helpful illustration may be a beautiful diamond that has been spoilt by a disfiguring scratch. The master-craftsman takes the diamond and engraves a rose, the stem of the rose is the scratch. Another example could be a painting whose canvas has been slashed. The painter reworks the painting, incorporating the rent in the canvas so that the final work is more textured and profound, if not as conventional, than it was before.

Mary’s capacity to channel the previously destructive elements of her passionate nature into fuel for her love for God is one of the main dynamics of the story. This is consistent with the Orthodox ascetic approach to dealing with sinful energy. The point is not to destroy the energies of our souls, but to redirect them in ways that lead us towards God. Perhaps one could summarise the whole of the life of St Mary of Egypt with the words: “Who do you love? How do you love?”. In the Gospel appointed for today the Lord says of the sinful woman: “she loved much”.

So, as we begin the last week of Great Lent and move into Holy Week, Mary’s life challenges us to reflect on the questions “Who do I love?” “How do I love?” As Christians we know that we are first loved with a love infinitely greater than our own. But we have to respond – becoming in that love, the person that we are meant to be.