This reminds me of a woman from a Jewish background who went through RCIA a number of years ago. After the Rite of Election, I met with the Elect separately from the Catechumens. At our first meeting of the Elect, after sharing what I was doing or not doing for Lent, I asked everyone in the group to share their Lenten plans if they wanted to. Everyone was quite eager. Three weeks later, I began the meeting by asking the people in the group how Lent was going vis-à-vis their plans. I emailed everyone a few days prior to let them know this how we would start our meeting. For the most part, it was the usual story about good intentions and some failures. Everyone seemed to grasp that growth occurs through the struggle. When it came to this person, she basically said that she was able to do everything she had planned to do for Lent and then some. She had not set the bar low. But she then shared that as she realized her "success" it occurred to her that success of that kind was not why she was doing or not doing these things. I think Zossima, at least on Varden's telling, felt something similar.
Especially as Varden conveys it, the story of Zossima and Mary is a story with a deeply late modern flavor. Varden keeps the focus off the prurient curiosity that often arises from Mary's recounting of her promiscuous behavior. Not only does he refuse to dwell on it, he is clearly not shocked by it, nor should he be. Rather, he focuses on the conversion of the Zossima, the monk who was in danger of becoming self-righteous, which is far worse than having sex with a lot of people. In other words, Varden refuses to engage in anything close to retrospective, ecclesial slut-shaming. It seems pretty clear from the story that Mary liked sex. For seventeen years after her conversion, she at times pined away for a good shag. Hey, a lot of people do. It's okay, relax. Certainly, the rush sex provides can become inordinate, even addictive.
Color version of the picture Varden uses in his text, from a fifteenth century manuscript
According to Varden, what Zossima gleans from his encounters with Mary, who went into the desert to live an ascetic life after her profound conversion experience in Jerusalem, is "that, before God, merit is as nothing, that what matters is to know one's need for mercy and to receive it thankfully." Sure, this story handed down smacks more than a little of legend. But it is a truth conveyed very forcefully. Another thing I like about the story of Mary of Egypt is the emphasis it puts on the power of baptism and the way it privileges that over Zossima's ordination.
The fruit of the lectio with Sunday's Gospel on that same morning cemented this insight for me: "you being wicked" (Luke 11:13).
Watching Good Omens, I am struck not only by how easy humanity makes Crowley's (the demon) job, but by how shocked Crowley himself is by human wickedness. I have to wade through a lot of self to get to the devil.
With all this in mind, I guess I should not be quite so disappointed in the trajectory the second series of Fleabag took in the penultimate episode. C'est moi, always hoping for better but not expecting it.
Anyway, our traditio this week is a song by Phil Keaggy, "World of Mine." It is from his Crimson and Blue, which came out in the early '90s. I owned the album, as I did so many others, on cassette tape. I recently discovered that the entire album is available for listening on YouTube. I laugh at people who are quick to dismiss all Contemporary Christian Music (CCM), just as I scoff at anyone who dismisses any entire genre of music. Truth be told, there has been a lot of very good, quite original CCM artists, songs, and albums.
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