St. Moses the Ethiopian

Moses was an Ethiopian, large of body and great of strength, who had been a slave in the house of an official in Egypt. He was put out of the household for theft and for his violent temper, and he gathered to himself a band of robbers, of whom he became the leader, terrible in those parts for his thefts and his cruelty. The Fathers do not hide what he had been, for the wonder of what he became is measured by it.

By a working of God that the tradition recounts in more than one way, this man came at last, fleeing or seeking, to the monks of the desert of Scetis, and was received among them. He could not at first be rid of the passions that had ruled him, and he struggled against the desires of the flesh and the memory of his old life with a violence equal to the violence he had once done to others, watching, fasting, standing through the nights in prayer, and laying bare his thoughts to the elders.

When a brother had fallen into a fault and the others gathered to judge him, they sent for Moses. He came carrying a basket pierced with holes and filled with sand, which ran out behind him along the path. "My own sins run out behind me, and I do not see them," he said, "and I have come today to judge the sins of another." Hearing this, the brethren forgave the one who had fallen and said no more.

In time the passions were stilled and Moses was made gentle and discerning, so that he was ordained priest, and many came to him for a word of salvation. The sayings of the desert keep many of his words, on humility, on guarding the tongue, and on weeping for one's own sins. He had been the chief of robbers; he became a father of monks.

When at the last a band of marauders came against the cells of Scetis, Moses, who had foreseen it, would not take up arms, but said that he who takes the sword shall perish by the sword, and he received them. With seven of the brethren who remained with him he was killed, about the year 405, and so the former man of blood was perfected as a martyr. The Church keeps his memory on the twenty-eighth of August, and his life is told in the sayings of the Desert Fathers.