2024 NaPM 15 April

[RiverNotch]

St. Mary of Egypt


If you want eternal life,
remember death. By such remembering
you yourself will be remembered.

But how much time did she spend
confessing all her sins
at that church in Jerusalem
or by the River Jordan?
How did the witnessing father feel,
if she held back no details,
while even in this truncated account
the devil in me is moved,
wishing that I were one of the pilgrims
sharing her ride out of Egypt?

Only in being remembered will you attain
eternal life, and even then
not just anyone's remembering.

I realize now that when she said
she had not seen a savage beast
in all those years which she had spent
naked, wandering
the far side of the River Jordan,
it was not that no bears nor lions
ever crossed her path.
Instead, on the instant they were exposed
to her saintliness,
they returned to the primal condition.

And yet, for some, to be remembered
is to remain in shame:
for the unrepentant, life itself is death.

Their bodies remembered how to be sustained
solely by herbs; their minds remembered peace.
And the father who covered her with his stole
as he intoned the prayer of absolution
must have remembered that same peace,
must have felt (at worst) some envy
at the coming triumph.