As we continue our end-of-year fundraiser, we will be highlighting female saints in whose company we walk. For our next companion, we’ve chosen St. Egeria: travel writer, mountaineer, anthropologist, historian, liturgist, spiritual seeker, and an explorer who continually defied convention in order to find God.
For three years, St. Egeria traveled the roads of Palestine, Israel, Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor, sending back words of encouragement to the religious community she left behind in the earliest known Christian pilgrimage diaries. With the Bible as her roadmap, she went to great lengths to get to obscure places, notably, Judaea and Galilee, Tabor, Eremus, the mountain of Elijah, Mount Nebo (where Moses died), and Harran (where Job’s tomb and Abraham’s house were). Most parts of her journey were rugged, inhospitable, and perilous. Her diary records her swimming in the Dead Sea, climbing up steep Mount Sinai, and retracing the route of the Exodus to visit the tomb of St. Thomas.
Although little is known about St. Egeria besides her writings, we can imagine that she craved the open landscapes, the intensity of the stars, the quiet of the road to be awestruck when she arrived at these crowded holy sites. In specifying details of the many liturgies and feast days she attended in Jerusalem, she has become one of the earliest liturgists and anthropologists. Through it all, St. Egeria tells us again and again that her journey wasn’t primarily about adventure or documenting worship practices. What was most important to her was how pilgrimage let her learn to be with God. As she met and prayed in the company of others who were dedicated to Christ (monks, nuns, bishops, and faithful laywomen), she saw herself being transformed by God’s presence.
Writing to her sisters about her experience on Mt. Sinai, she reflected that “it cannot be seen until you reach its very foot…only after you have fulfilled your desire and descend, you see it from the other side.” In this, she found a parable for so much of the spiritual life - as we walk together towards the summit of our goals, we are so often only able to trace the full profile in review.
St. Egeria embodied the truth that pilgrimage is never an isolated act, reminding us even today that our pilgrimage towards God is a lifelong and communal undertaking, meant to be shared with and support one another. None of us arrives at our destination alone.
Every day in churches and communities across the world, women like you are following in the footsteps of Saint Egeria, inspiring and supporting one another. In 2024, we want to create even more opportunities for us to walk together. Join us on this journey as we walk in the company of Orthodox women past and present, raising up one another’s gifts for the well-being of the whole Church.
