Please Read This As Soon As You Get The Chance

Please Read This As Soon As You Get The Chance August 28, 2016

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(Image via Pixabay)

Chase Padusniak over at Jappers and Janglers has just written an awesome introduction to a desert father and saint about whom I had previously known nothing, Abba Moses the Strong. As a teaser here is an anecdote of the saint’s witness and teaching that Chase has included in his account:

A certain brother committed an offence in Scete, the camp of the monks, and when a congregation was assembled ‎on this matter, they sent after Abba Moses, but he refused to come; then they sent the priest of the church to him, ‎saying, “Come, for all the people are expecting you,” and he rose up and came. He took a basket with a hole in it ‎and filled it with sand, and carried it upon his shoulders, and those who went out to meet him said unto him, “What ‎does this mean, O father?” And he said to them, “The sands are my sins which are running down behind me and I ‎cannot see them, and, even, have come to this day to judge shortcomings which are not mine.” And when they heard ‎this they set free that brother and said nothing further to him.‎

“The aim in all these things is not to judge one’s neighbor. For truly, when the hand of the Lord caused all the first-born in the land of Egypt to die, no house was without its dead.”

The brother said, “What does that mean?” The old man said, “If we are on the watch to see our own faults, we shall not see those of our neighbor. It is folly for a man who has a dead person in his house to leave him there and go to weep over his neighbor’s dead.

“To die to one’s neighbor is this: To bear your own faults and not to pay attention to anyone else wondering whether they are good or bad. Do no harm to anyone, do not think anything bad in your heart towards anyone, do not scorn the man who does evil, do not put confidence in him who does wrong to his neighbor, do not rejoice with him who injures his neighbor. This is what dying to one’s neighbor means. Do not rail against anyone, but rather say, ‘God knows each one.’”


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