So the story of Mary of Egypt (who lived in the latter half of the 4th and first part of the 5th centuries) begins with her decision to run away at age 12 from her home, and go to the Big City (second only to Rome) of Alexandria. There, she became a prostitute, as so many underage runaway girls have from time immemorial. Still, Butler writes that Mary herself reported that she was a streetwalker “not for interest (i.e., money), but to gratify an unbridled lust”–and that she continues as a prostitute in Alexandria for 17 years. At that point, she hears about a group of Christians that were going by boat to Jerusalem to celebrate Holy Week, so she finds her way onto the boat.

Well, Mary continues successfully to ply her trade amongst these Christians and continues doing so once she gets to the city of Jerusalem. She freely admitted that she took the trip to find new men to consort with, and not for any religious reasons–and she had no trouble finding willing johns.

During the Holy Week festivals, Mary decides to go into a church to see what all the fuss is about, only to find that something keeps holding her back. Try as she might, she just cannot propel herself through the door. So Mary decides to have a sit-and-think session about why she–a 29-year-old woman who had lived on her own and supported herself for some 17 years–could not bring herself to go inside a church (into which, no doubt, many of her johns from the voyage were then freely worshipping). She concludes that it was because of her own “criminal life”; she thereupon recognizes within herself that she really did not wish to continue as a prostitute any longer. At this point, Mary finds herself walking without hesitation into the church, where she cries out to the Goddess (that is, to the Blessed Mary of Heaven) to thenceforth serve as her “Protectress” and to lead her the rest of her life.

Mary of Egypt, under the direction of Mary of Heaven, crosses over the Jordan River into what is present-day Jordan, and lives there as a hermit, subsisting on what plants grew wild. (She also, under Mary of Heaven’s empowerment, crosses back and forth over the Jordan River by simply walking upon it, just as Jesus did on the Sea of Galilee). Only cone in the years that followed does Mary meet and converse with any other human being–an old man named Zosimus, who had become so complacent as a leader of a monastery that he thought he knew all there was to know about spirituality. Upon encountering Mary of Egypt, Zosimus learns more through their discussion than he had learned his whole life to that point.

Mary of Egypt never proclaimed that she found deliverance through the all-male godhead, but always credited Mary of Heaven. Nevertheless, Mary of Egypt was… and is… a saint.