Reverend Zosima of Palestine

Among the saints whose memory is honored by the Orthodox Church, a special place is occupied by St. Zosimas of Palestine, a monk whose history is inextricably linked with the life of Mary of Egypt.

Zosima was born around 460 in Palestine. In his early childhood he entered a monastery, where he spent more than fifty years in prayer, fasting and strict observance of the rules. By the age of fifty-three, the elder had attained high spiritual authority, but it was then that the thought of his own perfection began to overpower him. According to legend, an angel who appeared to him pointed to his pride and sent him to a monastery on the Jordan Bank, whose statutes required even greater severity.

In the monastery there was a special custom: before Lent the brethren went to the desert, where each alone performed the feat of prayer and abstinence until Palm Sunday. Zosima followed this rule. On the twentieth day of the journey, in the depths of the desert, he saw a naked figure of a man who had lived among the stones and heat for almost half a century.

It was a woman who called the monk by name, although she had never seen him before.
It was Mary of Egypt. She recounted the years of dissolute life in Alexandria, the sudden conversion at the threshold of the Temple of Jerusalem, and the forty-seven years of penance in the desert. Zosima was the only person she had ever spoken to.

At the request of the ascetic, the elder returned the following year on Holy Thursday with the Holy Gifts reserved. Mary crossed the Jordan by water, took communion and said goodbye to the monk. When a year later Zosima came to the agreed place, he found her body with an inscription at the headboard: the monk died on the night of Good Thursday, immediately after communion. She was buried by a lion who came out of the desert and dug the grave with his paws.

Returning to the monastery, Zosima gave the abbot John the order of the ascetic to pay attention to the structure of monastic life. His story formed the basis of the life of Mary of Egypt, which was later recorded by Archbishop Sophronius of Jerusalem. Zosima himself lived almost a hundred years and died in the same Jordanian monastery.