St. Mary of Egypt, universally venerated in Eastern Orthodoxy, is mostly unknown in the West. "How could this be?" we asked at our Franciscan Hermitage in 2017, when we began to follow the Orthodox calendar. "How could a saint of such prominence receive so little attention?"
It has been convenient to tell her story with its surprise ending for Westerners. It is the story of a girl named Mary who begins experimenting with sex at age eleven or earlier. Her parents try to correct her, but she cannot be corrected. After her initial experience, she looks to have more stimulation from the boys in her neighborhood. Gossip spreads rapidly in her small town, and before long she decides to move to the city, where she might go unnoticed. That her parents grieve terribly is no matter to her.
In the city she quickly learns that men want more than touching. So she loses her virginity to a stranger who does not care one way or the other. And neither does she. For the main thing is excitement and pleasure. She looks for intercourse with every man she meets. (She would confess later, she never said no.) For seventeen years, this is her daily preoccupation. Every morning, every night, every day. She does not do this for money. She has a job. She supports herself financially. It is sex that she wants. Sex is the main thing in her life. Inevitably she drifts into perversion seeking new excitement and forbidden acts. "Every kind of abuse of nature I regarded as life," she would later admit (Vita).
After some years, she meets men who say they love her. She meets women who want to be a friend. But she does not want relationship. She does not want to be close to others. She does not want others to be close to her. This would get in the way of freedom and variety. So she boards a ship, offering sexual favors for passage and board, and heads to another city.
She recommences her habits having sex with stranger after stranger — but sex without emotion, without commitment, without complications. Her mind is fixed only on sex, you see, not people. That is, she fixes her mind on bodies and body parts.
Mary's story is not uncommon in 2023, where nobody wants to make a commitment, and everybody wants sex. At age fifteen 22% of all children in the U.S. have had intercourse. About a quarter of all children in the U.S. age fifteen or younger have had intercourse. 65% by age 18. And at eighteen, that number is 65%. That is, the great majority of high school students have had intercourse. Marriage is no longer discussed by anyone. Pornography and perversion are present in nearly every American household. Nearly 20% of boys age ten have used it, a number that jumps to 60% by age fifteen.
In the United States, where discussion of morality is nearly banned as a form of hate speech, and perversion is categorized under the headings of taste and preference, any conversation, much less debate, has become difficult, if not impossible, and certainly "unsafe." One could lose his job. And reputations are not ruined by sexual depravity any more, but rather by speaking against it.
Within the medical community, Mary's behavior is still called nymphomania, but more commonly hypersexuality or Compulsive Sexual Behavior (CSB). These are convenient labels facilitating case studies. But these studies do little more than set out descriptions. CSB is yet to be listed as a diagnosis in the "bible" of psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). Advocacy groups push for this recognition, so therapists can charge insurance companies. Of course, this would follow a trend of medicalizing moral failings across the board.
Consider so-called gambling "addiction." Have scientists isolated a gambling bacterium or virus? Do compulsive gamblers report a history of brain injury or severe trauma? What exactly is compulsive gambling? Medical science does not know, for it is not a material pathology, but rather a spiritual one. It begins with a bad choice, which then is followed by more bad choices. There is no chemical addiction. There is no gene. Before long, habitual vice deepens into viciousness. Where a wholesome person once stood, a craven, destructive one stalks the streets, ruining career, family, and finally him- or herself. How many people have chosen to exterminate this craven creature by suicide! The pistol to the head outside a card game is proverbial.
Robert Louis Stevenson captured this man in his novella Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In daily life Dr. Jekyll tries to protect his public esteem and respect, but slowly his secret life takes over and cannot be hid. For the intruding Hyde is a symbol of Jekylls' fall into craven life. And which person habitually craving sex does not live a double life?
But medicine shall never explain it as an invading disease. For its beginning, end, and all reside in the will. It is a matter of formation, which is a spiritual category, not a material one. The formation of the saint, which includes asceticism, leads to sanctity. The formation of sexual obsession leads to compulsive sex on to to grotesquery.
Yes, there is the tragic case of the youngster who has been seduced. The literature reveals that the pattern is fairly common in large, rural families. A girl is introduced to sex at age eleven or twelve perhaps by an older brother or cousin. Once the pattern begins it carries forward with frequency as both boy and girl feel safe and both desire more and more pleasure. 65% of all women who have experienced this early exposure fall into lifelong nymphomania. 98% of all women reporting nymphomania say that they began at a very early age.
Medical professionals say that the far-reaching consequence of abuse is that the boy or girl becomes eroticized. They look out on the world through a sexual lens for possible new partners. You see, they cannot go back to their innocence. They can no longer see things the way they once did without certain subjects and images entering their minds. And hey carry this burden for the rest of their lives. Tragic.
Nonetheless, even as we grieve for these children and these children who have grown into adults, we are mindful that somewhere along the line in this emotional and psychological chaos, they have chosen for it. They consented to it (reaching the age of consent).
We might object and say, "But the deck is stacked against them!"
And we reply, "Yes, and we do not condemn them, certainly. We are for them, certainly. But it must be themselves who overcome this."
Let us say in general, where moral struggles are concerned the deck is always stacked, for the dealer is the father of lies. And his demons constantly look for opportunity and advantage. There is no fairness in the food chain. And there is no fairness in spiritual warfare. Fairness is a construct offered as a weak substitute for the imperatives of authentic spiritual journey.
If we return to the lens of medical science,
we see that treatment for Compulsive Sexual Behavior (CSB)
is indistinguishable from
spiritual direction.
The Mayo Clinic, to take one example, counsels
Now, is this any different from the advice a priest would give? You see, sexual immorality is fundamentally a spiritual illness. And personal discipline lies at the heart of all spiritual life.
Anyone who has worked with "addicts" (that medicalized term) can see it for it is, which is possession. At issue is the nobility of the human soul .... or its degradation. The soul free from sexual sin is open to the soaring discovery of relationship — the discovery of another soul and self-discovery. By contrast, the soul held captive by sexual compulsion is a slave. A single-minded mania for bodies and certain body parts diminishes the soul unto disfigurement. And exaggerating body parts in the imagination is a symptom of mania.
But spiritual beings, whether angels or demons, do not see bodies, much less body parts. They see souls. Ironically, the demon has a nobler view of the human person than most humans do. For the human soul, to him, is the everything and the all. The demon watches for opportunity for his invitation to take up residence. A brief glimpse of pornography becomes a series of return sessions. Before long, the soul consents to watch anything, and the demon's control increases. In the end, the soul loses its freedom. We are no longer "behind the wheel," but, instead, we are being driven .... driven on to more and more, until sexual images and sexual life have taken over. And the enslaved soul is willing to risk anything in its ruinous career toward destruction. You see, life has ended. this person has entered the culture of death. A trance is all that remains.
We know that St. Mary of Egypt was a historical figure because her profile aligns so precisely with the thousands of case studies of people in our own time. She begins very young. The statistical reality is that a brother or cousin has seduced her. She consents to more. Soon she asks for more. She is in the beginning stages of a lifelong trance.
Am I saying that the pandemic of sexual promiscuity among our children is related to possession? Of course it is! Being overwhelmed by compulsion is possession. We are no longer in control of our choices. And this is patently not a medical category: no visible cause; no chemical or genetic component; no cure.
I say "no cure." The rate at which people free themselves from this (though they will never be entirely free) is the same for drug addiction: about seven percent.
As promiscuity rises to the point of social custom, so instances of demon possession also rise. Fr. Gary Thomas, a licensed Roman Catholic exorcist, said that he has received nearly 2,000 requests per year. This is one priest. Think of it! How many priests can say that they have 2,000 people in their congregation (attending)? This one priest has received roughly 2,000 requests per year to exorcise demons? 80% of these people report sexual compulsion as the primary component. They know very well that a demon controls them. They walk in a trance following strangers. They drive in a trance. They cannot get their minds off of it. They seek sex with stranger after stranger in the midst of an epidemic of incurable disease! What else to you call this? In the certain knowledge that he will lose his marriage. He will lose the respect of his children. He will lose his career. He will lose everything. What else do you call this? To risk everything in exchange for a few minutes of degradation?! Is this not possession?!
150 Roman Catholic priests in the U.S. alone are active, licensed exorcists. These men include Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, who holds a degree in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. This is a very distinguished and intelligent man. Pope Francis has not only performed exorcisms but has convened a workshop on exorcism in Rome attended by 250 priests from fifty-one countries. These men are trained to distinguish demon possession from psychiatric or psychological illness. They are able to recognize schizophrenia or bipolar disease.
Educated Christians will cry out, "What you expect me to believe this?!" Well, no baptized Christian has ever entered the Church without undergoing an exorcism because that is what the Rite of Baptism is.
So let's get down to basics. What exactly is a demon? What is a demon like? A demon has no body of its own. He is a spiritual creature. In order to function in the material world, he must take over a material body, like a virus. A virus, unlike a bacterium, has no cellular reality. We might say that a virus is an "idea"; it is a code, literally: a segment of DNA or RNA. On its own, it has no existence. It must possess a cell taking over the cells operations in order to become the force that we know as disease.
It follows that the the demon to whom no one consents, like the virus that never invades a cell, is harmless. Just as our angels are frustrated by our unwillingness to consent to goodness, so the demon ardently desires that we invite him in, consenting to evil.
This raises the main question: what is evil? Like the demon or the virus, evil has no reality of its own. God, Who alone is good (Lu 18:19), made everything and "saw that it was good" (Gen 1:4,10,12,18,21,25,31). As St. John the Theologian has written,
| All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. (Jn 1:3) |
God did not create evil. Evil, therefore, has no reality on its own. On the contrary, evil is a perversion of goodness. It is an idea, not a thing. We can do evil but we cannot engage it objectively. Goodness alone has reality. That is, by taking the holy and turning it upside down, goodness is perverted.
I do not want to suggest that I have attended Satanic liturgies. But I do know that the prayers of the demons and of those who worship demons are the holy prayers said backwards, turned upside-down. Ancient occult doctrine holds that saying the Tetragrammaton (God's Real Name) backwards would cause the creation to unravel.
But let us consider more modest example of turning goodness upside-down. The goodness of food, the staff of life (as Sr. Marty reminds me as she bakes a new loaf of bread), can be overturned into gluttony. The goodness of the grape from God's own vineyard can be overturned into drunkenness. The holy goodness of pure love shared between a husband and wife can be overturned into adultery, perversion, and depravity.
Sexuality, in particular, is close to God's heart. And sexual morality is a non-negotiable with God.
And might I say in passing (because I have heard it said by so many, many people): if you believe that God has granted you this "little thing," this little, sexual weakness that only you and certain partners know about .... if you believe that God has granted you this exception, then, this is a sure sign that you are possessed. Sexuality is a non-negotiable with God!
Should we become sexual adventurers, we will contract an incurable disease. Herpes II, to name one sexual disease, has taken over one large ethnic group in America to a level of nearly 100%. According to the World Health Organization, "More than one million sexually transmitted infections are acquired every day worldwide, the majority of which are asymptomatic." Then there is Human Papilloma Virus associated with 311,000 deaths every year. Of course, there is deadly HIV AIDS. There is Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, Syphilis, or Trichomonbisasis. And many have a direct impact on reproductive health and fertility .... and death. Most of them are incurable.
Is it not obvious that God has built a high wall around sexual purity? Is it not obvious that He has set apart marriage and family — His building blocks for the entire human lifeworld — as being most precious, to be protected at all costs.
Should you become a sexual adventurer, you will hear the doctor tell you at some point, "I am sorry, madam .... I am sorry, miss, you will not be able to have children. I you should venture out into this wild world, you will discover over time that you have been dealt out. God does not see you as being a fit mother.
God's spiritual laws militate against promiscuity. If a woman has sex with many men, her body is apt to view their sperm cells (and the children they conceive) as being invaders. The medical record documents the pregnant female resorbing these little lives into her body. Only in monogamy does the female body, over time, come to view these cells as her own.
Should a boy and girl preserve the holy temple of their bodies for marriage, the way is open to purity in love, trust, and children raised in a wholesome environment. Should they squander this holy gift, then they will not have love but lust; they will have trust but distrust (which also has no cure); and they will not not have family, but children who also drift off to become sexual adventures. In this case, they will have condemned their children to be possessed.
It all has to do with consent, for consent is the door to possession. "I .... was the chosen vessel of the devil," said St. Mary of Egypt (Vita). Early on, however, Mary could not see that that she was possessed though everyone around her could see it (another sure symptom of possession). She does not break through to self-awareness, which is the first step to spiritual awakening.
Our Gospel lesson for St. Mary of Egypt Sunday details just such an awakening. A notoriously promiscuous woman (we do not know her name)
|
stood at His feet behind Him weeping; and she began to wash His feet with her tears
and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them .... (Lu 7:38) |
You see, she kneels before God in tears of remorse and contrition. She washes His feet with her tears and her hair. She anoints Him suggesting she has given all that she has, for such unguents are costly. She lays down her all — her body, her soul, her material worth — at God's feet kissing them in subjection and devotion. "Forgive me!" she cries out with her whole person. And Jesus does forgive her on that account.
By contrast, Mary of Egypt is carried along in a current, oblivious to who and what she is. Then, suddenly, she meets with a force field she cannot pass beyond.
And here we come to the surprise ending. Mary is not a girl of the modern age. She was not born in 2005. She was born in 344 A.D. Her new city is Jerusalem. And the force field she encounters is the incommensurable holiness radiating from the Holy Cross. She cannot understand it. The crowd courses along through the gates to see the Cross, but she cannot enter. She is held in place. She has lived in a trance, and here her enslavement reaches its logical conclusion. She is held down. She cannot move.
Each of us might live in a trance. Each of us might be oblivious to the state of our own souls. And every one of us, to be sure, will meet with the same force field met by Mary, for such a force field surrounds the Kingdom of Heaven. If God has protected His most precious earthly creation with a high wall surrounded by all manner of thorns and horrible creatures, then we might be sure that He has surrounded the Kingdom of Heaven.
To those who have loved goodness and God, it is invisible, Indeed, it is a wave of grace carrying them along into greater and greater goodness. But to those who have turned holy life upside down, it is impassable.
Sexual sin is especially egregious. Half the Ten Commandments forbid adultery and desecration of family either directly or indirectly. As God is pure, as the Lord Jesus and St. John the Forerunner stand out for their purity — the Baptist declares, "Behold, the Lamb of God, meaning "Behold, the Pure One!" — so we must also be pure, almost a foreign concept in our society, indeed, something to be derided!
As Peter writes warning us to put away our "former lusts" (1 Peter 1:14),
|
.... He who called you is holy, you also [must] be holy in all your conduct,
because it is written, "Be holy, for I am holy." (1 Peter 1:15-16) |
Seeking the Mother of God in a state of despair, St. Mary's trance finally snaps. Through fasting and prayer, entering the Sinai Wilderness as the people Israel had done (at the Theotokos' direction), she does achieve purity and holiness.
We must not fail to say during Great Lent that the Vita of St. Mary of Egypt models for us a proper general confession. She lays out her whole life before a priest; she expresses sincere remorse; she sheds many tears; and she confesses all. Each person. Each act. All. And she is absolved.
Follow our Desert Mother! Buy a little book of blank pages, and prepare your general confession. Usually, this will take months. I have done it. You begin with the Ten Commandments going over your whole life. Then, you single out the Seven Deadly Sins applying them to your personal story. You then call back to mind the narrative of your lifetime person-by-person. You remember your life chronologically time period after time period. Eventually, you will get it all because the more you write, the more you will remember. This book will become precious to you.
I have gone through this cleansing sacrament twice: once preceding my Anglican ordination and once on the eve of my Roman Catholic ordination. Trust me, you will feel light as a feather when you walk away with that absolution! Light as a feather, fully alive and aware, and pure, right down to your heart and soul. And more thing: your face will begin to give off light. Have you seen the faces of the saints? Do you know this light? It is very real .... as real as goodness.
Pray for us, St. Mary of Egypt, for you glided through the wilderness
as if held aloft by angels!
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.