✦ Remembering Saints

Feast day: April 1

St. Mary of Egypt

Penitent · c. 344–421

Patron of Penitents

A woman of Alexandria who lived for years in reckless sin, was stopped by an unseen force at the door of a church in Jerusalem, repented, and spent forty-seven years alone in the desert.

After a lifetime of sin she fled into the desert beyond the Jordan and lived there nearly half a century in penance — one of the great conversion stories of the East.

Get a story like this every Sunday.

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