At the Matins service in the Seraphim-Diveyevo monastery’s Trinity Cathedral today, the Penitentiary Canon of Venerable St. Andrew of Crete was read in its entirety with the addition of the canon to Venerable St. Mary of Egypt, an ascetic from the end of the 5th and beginning of the 6th century AD.

The Fourth Church Council’s approval for reading “was aimed at those of the faithful who were too overcome with slothfulness to pursue the ascetic deeds during the Great Forty Day Fast that comes to a close, according to the Synaxarion of the Thursday service. It was to keep them from falling into careless spiritual neglect or fall completely away from the virtuous life.”

Numerous biblical accounts in the Canon, from Adam to the apostolic times, and the life’s account of Venerable St. Mary, “who at first had displayed the abyss of sin only to reach the soaring heights of virtue later” as outlined in the Life of Venerable Mary of Egypt depict the great mercy of God and remind us that repentance is the only way to drive out sin.