Saint Mary of Egypt has always been one of those main, well-known saints in my life growing up. I always heard about her from Sunday school servants, priests, and spiritual mentors. But in my mind, she was always just a saint that represented repentance. Sometimes I just thought of her as the female version of Saint Moses the strong. Either way, the two things that always came to mind when hearing her name were: 1- Lust & 2- Repentance.
It wasn’t until recently that I became more curious about her actual life. What was behind all of the debauchery and lust? And what makes someone go into the desert for 47 years, alone and starving, in the name of “repentance”?
First: A brief summary of her story.
Saint Mary of Egypt, at a very young age, left her parents and began to give herself to multiple men for sensual pleasure. I’ll let her tell you herself. In her own words:

“I am ashamed to recall how there I at first ruined my maidenhood and then unrestrainedly and insatiably gave myself up to sensuality… for about seventeen years, forgive me, I lived like that. I was like a fire of public debauch. And it was not for the sake of gain — here I speak the pure truth. Often when they wished to pay me, I refused the money. I acted in this way so as to make as many men as possible to try to obtain me, doing free of charge what gave me pleasure… but I had an insatiable desire and an irrepressible passion for lying in filth. This was life to me.”

And it didn’t end there. After getting on a boat to Jerusalem to join others who were visiting the Church of the Sepulcher, she recounts:

“How shall I relate to you what happened after this? Whose tongue can tell, whose ears can take in all that took place on the boat during that voyage! And to all this I frequently forced those miserable youths even against their own will. There is no mentionable or unmentionable depravity of which I was not their teacher.”

After being unable to enter the church because of her state at first, and then an encounter with Saint Mary, the Mother of God, she enters the wilderness and begins her journey of repentance. There she battles the passions, learns to pray (and eventually elevates while praying in her later years), and becomes the pure, holy saint we all know and love.
So, again, what was behind all of the debauchery and lust? And what makes someone go into the desert for 47 years, alone and starving, in the name of “repentance”?
I used to look down on her old life, before her repentance. I shook my head at the shameful things she did in her youth. But as I looked deeper into the person of Saint Mary of Egypt, I actually saw something I really admired. And I’m not talking about after her 47 years in the wilderness. No, there is something beautiful in broken Amma Mary.
I see the honesty and violence with which she acknowledged her hunger and sought satisfaction. Yes, maybe she was running from one man to another and seeking only her sensual pleasure, but she knew she hungered for love. Something deeper than she could explain. Not that she sought satisfaction for that hunger properly, at first, but she did so honestly and violently nonetheless. And she was honest in acknowledging that what she was doing was not satisfying that hunger. “but I had an insatiable desire and an irrepressible passion for lying in filth.” So she sought, no, she violently pursued this satisfaction, so eagerly.
If you, like me, at one point looked at this stage of her life with shame, let’s first realize that most of us might not have even reached this state of acknowledging our deep hunger. And even more than that, are aware of our failure and inability to satisfy it. With all of the distractions at our fingertips nowadays, it’s hard to notice what we’re thinking, let alone the deep needs and cries of our souls.
What was behind all of the debauchery and lust was a deep hunger for true Love. One that can only be satisfied by God. She was restless, desperate for anything to fill the void she had in her soul. It was because she violently pursued sensual pleasure and all sorts of debauchery, she could also violently pursue repentance and purity after her encounter with Christ.
47 years alone in the wilderness is violent. Starving your body for all those years is violent. Remaining naked through extreme cold and extreme heat is violent. Warring against the passions, specifically that of lust, for years on end in the desert… is violent.

“And how shall I tell you, O Abba, of the thoughts that pushed me towards lust once more? A fire was kindled in my miserable heart which seemed to burn me up completely and to awake in me a thirst for embraces. As soon as this craving came to me, I flung myself on the earth and watered it with my tears… And I did not rise from the ground (sometimes I lay thus prostrate for a day and a night) until a calm and sweet light descended and enlightened me and chased away the thoughts that possessed me.”

Truly, “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.”
I don’t think one who had not been so violent in her life of sin could be this violent in her pursuit of holiness. I don’t think Amma Mary would have experienced that level of satisfaction in God’s love, had she not first experienced that same deep level of emptiness and brokenness in her life. To the extreme extent that she was broken, empty, and impure, she, through repentance, became healed, satisfied, and restored in her purity.
What makes someone go to the wilderness for 47 years, alone and starving, in the name of “repentance”, is finding the satisfaction to their “insatiable desire” that they’ve lived with all their life. Finding the One their soul longs for, the answer to the deep cries in their heart for Love. Amma Mary reminds me of a verse from the Song of Songs: “When I found the one I love. I held him and would not let him go, Until I had brought him to the house of my mother, And into the chamber of her who conceived me.” She found Him. And she did not let Him go. She let go of her whole life, to pursue one that would lead her to her Beloved.
Would she have spent 47 years in the wilderness, as difficult as it was, if she hadn’t there found fullness of Life? If Saint Mary of Egypt hadn’t found the Way, Truth, and Life in that wilderness of repentance, I think she would have gone back to her old life. But because she stayed, specially through the wars and difficulty of the wilderness, I am confident that she found satisfaction, a peace which surpasses all understanding.
Be violent in your repentance, and do not despair. As violent as you may be in your sins, even more violently can you one day be in the love of God. Take her as a mother and friend.
May the intercessions of Amma Mary of Egypt be with us always.