The “Prayer of St. Mary of Egypt” is a deeply moving prayer of repentance drawn from the life of one of the Church’s most remarkable penitent saints. The prayer acknowledges one’s unworthiness to even call upon Mary’s holy name, yet turns to her precisely because of that unworthiness — trusting in God’s mercy toward sinners. It asks Mary to intercede so the penitent may draw near to Christ, Who shed His Blood for sinners, and implores her to personally guide them by the hand along the path of repentance and conversion.

In the 7th century, St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, recorded the extraordinary story of Mary — a woman who lived a life of grave sin for seventeen years before experiencing a powerful conversion at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Unable to enter the church by a mysterious force, Mary cried out to the Blessed Virgin Mary before her icon, begging for help and promising to renounce her sinful life forever. Through Our Lady’s intercession, she was allowed to enter, and from that moment she spent the remaining forty-seven years of her life in the desert in prayer and penance.

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