On Sat, 21 Sep 1996, Jo Ann McNamara wrote:
> Just a gloss on Mary of Egypt. She was naked because she had spent so
> many years as a solitary penitent in the desert that her clothes had
> decayed away. Her hair covered her so that she did not lose her modesty
> when she confronted a passing monk and asked him to bring her the
> Eucharist to help her in dying. I don't think that the nakedness was
> part of her spirituality.
>
> The question of covering nakedness is more common: Agnes was shielded by
> her hair when condemned to a brothel, for example. My guess would be
> that any women who tried to make some spiritual statement by stripping
> would be swiftly hustled out of sight and certainly not commemorated in
> hagiography. Though--maybe among heretics??
> Jo Ann McNamara
>
But surely in this case her nakedness resulted FROM her spirituality and
was intimately related thereto? Would her clothes necessarily have rotted away
had she not spent so many years in the desert? Again, I don't know all the
details from memory but from the account above, it would appear that she
wasn't worried about her deshabille' UNTIL she wanted to ask the monk for
the Eucharist--how long was she undraped before that without being concerned
for her modesty?
This may seem like splitting hairs (ouch!) but I think there is
a connection of sorts--when one is alone with God, repentant, the state of
the body or its covering does not matter, perhaps? Mary evidently became
perturbed about her lack of covering only before a human, male observer, not
God, and I wonder about the obvious contrast with Adam and Eve who WERE ashamed
of their nakedness before God.
John P.
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