Hers
is perhaps the ugliest image in Orthodox iconography. Just about any other
saint, even the serious ascetics, gets to shine with ageless, transcendent
beauty. But not her. She’s always presented to us as a gaunt, withered old
woman, naked but for a borrowed cloak, her skin leatherized from years of
exposure to the elements, and with a bad hairdo. Her expression is often almost
pathetic. It’s difficult to imagine her as sexually alluring in her youth, even
though that’s how the story goes, and her story is familiar to the many Eastern
Orthodox Christians who encounter it annually on the fifth Sunday of Great
Lent. Her life is read aloud with the
Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete at the following Thursday’s matins. It can be an emotional experience to be
confronted with the image of her radical repentance. It can also be an occasion
for modern people like me to come up against elements of her tale that raise
more questions than they answer. I’ll review her story for the benefit of those
unfamiliar with it.
