One cannot prove with certainty what share history has and what share superstition has in the traditions concerning the saint (Mary of Egypt). (20)It is better to focus only on the fact that the Church wanted to establish from it, as we claim in the Matins prayer, (a model of repentance). It is a symbol of conversion, repentance and asceticism. It expresses, on this last Sunday of Lent, the last and most urgent invitation that the Church addresses to us before the days of the Passion and the Holy Resurrection.

The message read at the Mass (Hebrews 9:11-14) compares the ministry of Christ with that of the Hebrew high priest. This priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year, but Christ “has entered the Holy of Holies once, having obtained eternal redemption.” The high priest purified and sanctified the faithful by sprinkling the blood and ashes of the sacrifices upon them. (How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works, so that you may serve the living God?)

The Gospel (Mark 10:32-45) describes Jesus’ ascent to Jerusalem, before his passion. Jesus took the twelve disciples aside and began to tell them that he would be betrayed, condemned, killed and resurrected. On the threshold of Holy Week, would it occur to us that the Savior would come alone with us for an intimate conversation in which he would explain to us the mystery of redemption? Would we ask the Master to tell us more deeply what was happening for us on Golgotha? Would we give Jesus the possibility of such a secret conversation? Would we seek out these opportunities to encounter the Lord?

Then the sons of Zebedee came to Jesus and asked him to sit in his glory, one on his right and the other on his left. Jesus asked them—and he asks us as well—this question: “Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?” Then the Master explained to the disciples that true greatness lies in service: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

The evening of this fifth Sunday of Lent gives a ray of light to the entrance into Holy Week, next Sunday. Next Sunday will be the Sunday of Lazarus, whom Jesus raised. The evening prayer of the fifth Sunday of Lent foretells from that time onward Lazarus risen from the dead, by referring to Lazarus, the poor man of the Gospel parable (Luke 16:19-31).

(Make me like poor Lazarus and save me from the punishments of the rich man… Let us emulate his patience and longsuffering.) The Church, eager in a certain sense to enter into the days of great holiness that will begin next week, urges us on this Sunday to go towards the feast that we will celebrate in seven days: (Let us sing the hymns of the Palm Sunday offering to the Lord who comes in glory to Jerusalem, to slay death by the power of his divinity. Let us prepare the banners of victory with good worship, crying out: Hosanna to the Creator of all.)

(20) In the sixth century, tourists venerated near the Monastery of Souka in Egypt the tomb of a holy woman named Mary, who had lived in the wilderness as a hermit and penitent. This is all we can say historically. The Jerusalem Patriarch Sophronius wrote a biography of Mary of Egypt in the seventh century, based on no acceptable historical source, and it became the basis for a later literature on the subject.

According to these traditions, Mary was converted after spending years of life in sin and spending forty-seven years in the wilderness in the company of angels and wild animals, and was helped by some holy monks.