Saint Spyridon the Wonderworker, Bishop of Trimythus in Cyprus (348)
Repose of Herodion of Kapsala of Mount Athos the Fool-for-Christ the Romanian (1990)
Repose of Eldress Mary Magdalene Hermitess of Tholas (Wadi Et-Tlah) Sinai (2013)
Commemorated on December 12
Blessed is the life of those who dwell in the desert, winged as they are by divine eros. (The Hymns of Ascent, 1st Antiphon, Plagal of 1st tone)
“You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Coloss. 3:3).
Virtue has the habit of betraying man, wherever he may hide. Though he may act as a fool-for-Christ,’ still he will be betrayed, though it may bee later on, and he will help many souls. St.Paisios of the Holy Mountain
Eldress Mary Magdalene (Marie Madeleine Le Beller), Hermitess of Sinai (+ 2013)
The most-venerable Eldress Mary Magdalene, known in the world as Marie Madeleine Le Beller, was from Paris and went to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage and was baptized an Orthodox Christian when she was forty years old at the Jordan River in 1986. There she prayed to St. John of Climacus, to show her the way of her salvation and the place for her solitary life of total dedication to God. She went to the Sinai desert, and lived near the cave of St. John of Climacus in the Valley of Tholas approximately 8km from st. Katherne’s monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai.
For the first six months at Sinai, Mary Magdalene slept outside among the boulders and rocks, having only a sleeping bag, with scorpions and poisonous snakes as her only companions. Many considered her to be a crazy and delusional woman. She had sold her home in Paris and bought a piece of land from a Bedouin just below the cave of St. John of Climacus. There was already a carob tree and a well. She built five cells , a small chapel on top of rock, planted olive trees and a few apple trees, a vine, a garden, and built a small cistern. She also built a wall all around it.
In this place Mary Magdalene lived a simple life, tending to her garden, making prayer ropes, and later in life she occupied herself with woodcarving which she used to decorate her chapel with icons.
Initially she would go to the monastery every Sunday, but later on she would go every fifteen and on great feast days in order to receive Holy Communion.
Some fathers from the monastery of saint Katherine took pity on her and protected her, but many rejected her and made her life difficult. Once they forbade fr. Paule to accept her confession and did not allow her free hospitality at the hostel for women. She had strong faith and recalled the blessing the she had received from elder Sophrony, st. Porphyrios and matushka Lubuska the fool for Christ of st. Petersburg to be there. It seems that those fathers who did not like her thought that she should not live alone in the desert, and should have stayed at the female monastery in Faran, where she should first have lived at least for a year and a half in obedience. However, st. Paisios the Athonite, on his last visit to Sinai , when he visited the monastery in Faran, gave the nun Mary Magdalene his blessing to live in the desert after examining her and blessing her rule of prayer.
She would go to Jerusalem every Holy Week and Bright Week, then return to her cell at Sinai. After the Pascha of 2009, she no longer went to Jerusalem.
On the 18th November in 2012, a Sunday, she went to Crete to be examined at the Venizelio Hospital, and was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer.
From there she went to Moscow where she knew the bishop who oversaw the hospital of the Russian Church. There they did prolonged medical examinations and asked her to undergo surgery and chemotherapy at the largest medical center against cancer in Russia. But she did not accept, desiring to die at her beloved skete. She went to saint Seraphim of Sarov’s Hermitage, washed herself in his spring, and took great courage.
She returned to Sinai via Italy, where she visited the Church of saint Nicholas in Bari, and there she met a Russian woman named Euphrosyne, whom she asked to attend to her at Sinai. Euphrosyne responded positively and accompaniedher to Sinai, where she attended to the eldress till the end, without any material benefit. Euphrosyne was a gift of God because she spoke only Russian, which Mary barely spoke and understood. But they had excellent co-operation and was a good caretaker to her (for about ten months ), winning over the love and the respect of the fathers.
After Pascha of 2013 Mary could barely move anymore, let alone go to the monastery, but she bore the cross of her painful disease with great courage patience, without medical assistance and hospital care.
On the 12th of December in 2013, a Thursday, at 1:00 PM, eldress Mary reposed in the Lord in her cell, next to the cave of St. John of Climacus. Fr. Paule of Sinai rushed to her and had served a Divine Liturgy in her skete to commune her before her blessed repose.
The next day, after Fr Paule served another Divine Liturgy, they had her body brought to the local hospital to confirm her death. There she was kept frozen until the issue of a burial permit from the French Consulate. Then a strange thing occurred that brought admiration from those there. A snowstorm took place covering the area in white snow. The monastery therefore sent fourteen workers, all Christin Copts, to carry her body along the rugged terrain in the middle of a blizzard to her skete. Although it would take two hours to reach her skete from the motorway (which under normal conditions would take an hour), when they raised up her sacred relic it took them just 45 minutes later the snowstorm began again.
The permission to bury her was given on the night of December 17, 2013. She was buried the next day, a Wednesday, at the cemetery of the female monastery of the Prothet Moses in Faran according to the wishes of the fathers of the monastery of saint Katherine, even though it was her wish to be buried at her skete. No one who was near and dear to her attended her burial except Euphrosyne , who had served her with great self-denial. A German obstetrician who was known to her changed her garments for the burial, and stayed up all night beforehand to read the psalter over her body, but she had left for Jerusalem before the funeral.
Archbishop Damianos of Sinai and hieromonks Michael and Eugenios did the funeral, with four nuns of the monastery in Faran.
Fr. George Athanasakis
Translation English: https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2019/04/eldress-mary-magdalene-marie-madeleine.html
source: https://iconandlight.wordpress.com/2018/12/11/26509/
french translation
Staritza Marie Madeleine [Le Beller] Ermite du Sinaï ( +2013)
https://orthodoxologie.blogspot.com/2019/04/staritza-marie-madeleine-le-beller.html
St.Paisios of the Holy Mountain
The humble are like nightingales that hide in ravines and spread joy to the souls of men with their sweet songs.
The monk flees far from the world, not because he detests the world, but because he loves the world and in this way he is better able to help the world through his prayer, in things that don’t happen humanly but only through divine intervention. In this way God saves the world.
Those who constantly partake of the love of God are often indifferent to material nourishment. Or, if they eat, they don’t taste the food, for even then they continue to feel God intensely and to partake of the sweet blessing of His love. When the heart becomes a furnace through the love of God, it is then able to burn up all vanity that approaches, and this brings internal peace when man passes through the fiery trials of his life.
There are no people more blessed than those who have made contact with the “heavenly television station” and who are piously connected to God.
Oh, blessed desert by which created man is so greatly helped to be reconciled with his Creator, and is transformed into an earthly Paradise – as you gather once again the wild animals around the person you tamed!
In former days, the Holy Fathers first withdrew into the desert, becoming themselves a desert void of their passions by struggling. Without plans or programs of their own, they left themselves in the hands of God, avoiding honors and power, even when they arrived at measures of sanctity — unless Mother Church had need of them. They did obedience to the will of God, and they glorified the name of God with their holy life. They became spiritual blood donors, for they had acquired good spiritual health in the desert with good spiritual food and vigilant patristic watchfulness.
In our day, however, many of us, who are unfortunately influenced by worldly love, which can make no spiritual pledge, supposedly venture to do good, to donate blood, but our blood is full of spiritual bacteria and we do more harm than good.
If, however, we were living patristically, we would all have spiritual health, which even all the heterodox would envy, leaving their sick delusions aside to be saved without preaching. Now, however, they are not moved by our Holy Patristic Tradition, for they want to see how we continue the Patristic Tradition, to see our true kinship with our Saints.
Unfortunately, in our day, words and books have multiplied and experiences have diminished, because the worldly spirit, which pursues all conveniences and avoids all bodily effort, influences people.
Of greater value is one word of a humble man who has spiritual experience, coming with pain from the bottom of his heart, than a whole array of learned words from a superficial man, coming with great speed from his learned tongue. His tongue does not enlighten souls for it is fleshly and not that fiery tongue of Holy Pentecost…
The Apostle Paul, telling the Colossians that their hidden life in Christ will be revealed at his coming, exhorted those Christians to radical and strenuous moral and ascetical effort: “Therefore put to death your members that are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (3:5). While they await the final revelation of glory, Christians quietly labor in the inner pursuit of that “holiness, without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14).
This characteristic of “concealment” that marks the lives of Christians explains why the Church for many centuries has celebrated an annual Feast of All Saints. Quite simply there are more saints than even the Church can identify, because the inner holiness of most Christians is concealed .
The great majority of the saints have lived very hidden lives, their inner communion with God so quiet and concealed that only God knew it. The Good Shepherd discerns who they are and calls them by name.
Eldress Mary Magdalene (Marie Madeleine Le Beller) of Sinai .-29′ 20”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_dOaSj6dxI
Apolytikion St. John Climacus, Plagal of the Fourth Tone
With the rivers of your tears, you have made the barren desert fertile. Through sighs of sorrow from deep within you, your labors have borne fruit a hundredfold. By your miracles you have become a light, shining upon the world. O John, our Holy Father, pray to Christ our God, to save our souls.
God bless our spiritual struggle and journey to the Heavenly Kingdom!
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