04 — The Priest and Elder
The former robber raised to the altar. This section follows Moses to his ordination to the priesthood and the testing of his humility that the tradition attaches to it — including the racial dimension, the contempt he met as a black African, reported here soberly as the Sayings report it — and then sets out the theology of self-accusation and humility that he embodied and that his whole reputation rests upon.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; martyr)
That a man of Moses’s past — a slave, a criminal, an Ethiopian in a world not free of prejudice — should be ordained to the priesthood is itself a statement of the desert’s values, and the tradition surrounds the ordination with episodes that test and display his humility. This section takes up first the ordination and its testing, then the theology of self-knowledge and humility that those episodes enact, the theology that the Apophthegmata attach to Moses more closely than to almost any other father.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Ordination and the Test | His ordination to the priesthood; the testing of his humility, including the episodes in which his Ethiopian identity is made the matter of contempt and of his own self-accusation; the racial dimension reported as the sources give it; his meekness under it. |
| Humility and Self-Knowledge | The theology Moses embodied — self-accusation, the unceasing remembrance of one’s own sin, and the humility that the desert held to be the root of all the virtues and the condition of grace. |
See Also
- The Teacher of Non-Judgment — the humility that these episodes display
- The Black Desert Father — the racial dimension treated at length
- Spiritual Direction — the eldership Moses came to exercise
References
- Ward, Benedicta, trans. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Rev. ed. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984. (Abba Moses 3, 4, and the ordination sayings.)
- Palladius. The Lausiac History. Trans. Robert T. Meyer. ACW 34. New York: Newman Press, 1964. (Chapter 19.)
- Harmless, William. Desert Christians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.