As issues of racism and racial reconciliation come to the fore both in national conversation and within our churches, in the Coptic Orthodox Church we instinctively turn to one of our most beloved saints: St. Moses the Strong, also known as St. Moses the Ethiopian or St. Moses the Black. His feast day is July 1 (Paona 24). In Coptic prayers and hymnology, his title is “St. Moses the Strong,” (“Pi-Gori Abba Moussa”). In this essay I will refer to him in this way.
St. Moses the Strong is revered in all Orthodox churches, Oriental and Eastern. For Copts, his story is most often repeated in the Synaxarium, and this story has come into question recently for some of its seemingly racist undertones. The story in the Synaxarium, however (which can be read here in the Daily Coptic Lectionary), is an almost verbatim quotation from the Apophthegmata Patrum, known to us in English as The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. In the translation by Sr. Benedicta Ward, this story appears in the alphabetical collection under Abba Moses, and it reads as follows:
“It was said of Abba Moses that he was ordained and the ephod was placed upon him. The archbishop said to him, ‘See, Abba Moses, now you are entirely white.’ The old man said to him, ‘It is true of the outside, lord and father, but what about Him who sees the inside?’ Wishing to test him the archbishop said to the priests, ‘When Abba Moses comes into the sanctuary, drive him out, and go with him to hear what he says.’ So the old man came in and they covered him with abuse, and drove him out, saying, ‘Outside, black man!’ Going out, he said to himself, ‘They have acted rightly concerning you, for your skin is as black as ashes. You are not a man, so why should you be allowed to meet men?’”
The archbishop instructs the priests in the monastery to insult him about the color of his skin, and also comments that he has become “all white,” insinuating that his sinful state before his repentance was “black,” and equating whiteness with sinlessness. Many people see this anecdote as racist, and rightly so. Some even question the validity of this saying.
Those questions have merit—after all, St. Moses the Strong lived in the fourth century, when racism as a social construct didn’t exist. The translation by Sr. Ward is of a 12th century Greek manuscript that is presumably copied from collections recorded as early as the 6th century. By the 12th century, the Arab East African slave trade was well underway, and with it, ideas of darker-skinned people being “lesser” than lighter people had infiltrated North Africa and the Mediterranean. While doubtful, as most manuscript copies aimed to be copies of the original source, the possibility of a racist “gloss” is there.
Out of curiosity, I checked to see what the Synaxarium of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church says—and found it was almost identical to the Coptic Synaxarium, racist language and all (Budge, Wallis. The Synaxarium of The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, 2017). Due to the ecclesiastical links to the Coptic Orthodox Church, the similarity is not surprising. What is surprising is that the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, a church in the only African country that was never colonized, did not revise this story. Today, some Copts have called for a revision of the Synaxarium to remove this problematic language, but I suggest a different path.
First, in order to prove this story might not have been true, we would need to have access to the earliest possible manuscript with the sayings and stories of St. Moses, in Coptic or Greek. We don’t have access—but what if we did, and what if, in the original manuscript, which would have pre-dated even the Arab East African slave trade, the story still stands?
Considering all the rest of the sayings by and about Abba Moses in the Apophthegmata, is it possible that the archbishop at an Egyptian monastery might insult a young monk because of the color of his skin? Yes. Is it possible that St. Moses responded in the way he did? Also yes. And if so, what do we do about this? Do we erase it from the story? I think if we did, we would lose more than we gain. What is more important is that we understand the context, and focus on the most important message: humility for all of us.
Let us first consider our concerns about the words of the archbishop. We don’t want to believe that one of our desert fathers would use such language, and this is because we want to believe that the saints are perfect, and can do no wrong.
But sainthood is not perfection. Sainthood is continual striving for holiness.
The story does not tell us this, but perhaps this same archbishop was ashamed of his words when he saw the repentance of St. Moses. This is certainly possible, even if the story doesn’t tell us so. Further, it’s important to note that there is a tradition of monastic leaders being particularly cruel to young monks wanting to be consecrated. It had its purpose. The ascetic life is difficult, and the role of the bishop or the abbot was to make sure that those who enter it are ready for it. The ascetic life requires lifelong humility and obedience, and often this verbal cruelty was a test of the humility and obedience of the novices entering into it.
According to The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, “Abba Isaiah said, ’Nothing is so useful to the beginner as insults. The beginner who bears insults is like a tree that is watered every day.’” Worse, one story about Abba Sisoes recounts that a man went to see him because he wanted to become a monk. Abba Sisoes learns that the man has a son, and tells him “Go and throw him into the river and then you will become a monk.” The man goes to obey the Abba, and Abba Sisoes sends a monk to stop him. “So he left his son and went to find the old man and he became a monk, tested by obedience,” the story concludes. St. Moses and other brothers might have had their humility tested by cruel language, but this monk had his obedience tested by being asked even more cruelly to throw his child into the river.
Further, the archbishop’s testing of St. Moses, and St. Moses’ response, echo Christ’s exchange with the Syrophoenician (or Canaanite) woman in Matthew 15: 21-28. When the woman follows Christ, asking Him to heal her demon-possessed daughter, He at first doesn’t even answer her. His disciples are no better, asking Him to send her away. Then,
“He answered and said, ‘I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ Then she came and worshiped Him, saying, ‘Lord, help me!’ But He answered and said, ‘It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.’ And she said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.’ Then Jesus answered and said to her, ‘O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.’ And her daughter was healed from that very hour.’”
Here, Christ Himself likens the Gentile woman, asking for a miracle, to a dog. And, like Abba Moses, her humble response earned her praise from God Himself: “O woman, great is your faith!” Would we take the same revision to Scripture? I think not. Rather, we can look more closely at this parallel and consider what it means for St. Moses and also what it means for us today.
Before we speak of what it means, let us first establish what it doesn’t mean. What it doesn’t mean is that now in the 21st century all Black people should respond with the same humility as St. Moses the Strong did at any racial epithet or to institutional racism more generally. This humility was in the context of a Christian monastery.
We cannot superimpose the traditions of a Christian monastery in the 4th century desert onto the civic life of citizens who may not be Orthodox, or even Christian.
But we also should not assume that racial epithets are acceptable in the church context. Consider this saying about Abba Moses:
“Another day when a council was being held in Scetis, the Fathers treated Moses with contempt in order to test him, saying, ‘Why does this black man come among us?’ When he heard this he kept silence. When the council was dismissed, they said to him, ‘Abba, did that not grieve you at all?’ He said to them, ‘I was grieved, but I kept silence.’”
Note that he was grieved. He maintained silence and his humility, but the words still grieved him.
As brothers and sisters in Christ we should keep careful watch over our words so that we do not grieve each other.
The lesson in the story is not in the model of the unnamed Fathers who treated Abba Moses with contempt, but the model of Abba Moses’ silence.
Further, that was a 4th century monastery. This is now. The Church in the world is not a monastery in the desert, and the Church’s witness to the world is much different than that of the desert. Our lesson as Christians from this story is NOT the testing of the archbishop, but the humility of St. Moses – whose strength was found in exactly that humility. It is, after all, St. Moses who is canonized, while the archbishop remains unnamed.
Let us learn more about St. Moses’ humility. Consider this well-known story from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers:
“A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, ‘Come, for everyone is waiting for you.’ So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, ‘What is this, Father?’ The old man said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’ When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him.”
In other tellings of this story, it is a sack of sand with a hole in it, and it is his sins that trail him like sand. In both cases, the parable is clear – rather than judging a brother who might have sinned, we should remember our own sins, “those which we have committed knowingly and those which we have committed unknowingly,” in the words of the Coptic Agpeya prayer.
St. Moses further teaches us that without this humility, God will not hear our own prayers:
“If the monk does not think in his heart that he is a sinner, God will not hear him. The brother said, ‘What does that mean, to think in his heart that he is a sinner?’ Then the old man said, ‘When someone is occupied with his own faults, he does not see those of his neighbour.’”
How many of us were occupied with our own faults when we circulated post-mortem vilification of George Floyd—one that conveniently overlooked his subsequent repentance and active attempt to change his life?
We might recall that St. Moses himself led a life more heinous than that of George Floyd prior to his repentance, conversion to Christianity, and life of monasticism. Our sins trail behind us, and yet we come to judge the errors of another.
The sad reality is that the United States of America built its freedom and independence on the bodies of Black people, and its laws continue to trample over Black bodies even after emancipation through Jim Crow laws, segregation, lynching, the school-to-prison pipeline, mass incarceration, and discriminatory policing. A revision to the Synaxarium story would do little to change this. An attitude of humility towards each other and especially towards our Black brothers and sisters might help us do better. The “strong St. Abba Moses” as we commemorate him in every Divine Liturgy is “strong” not because of his renowned physical strength before his conversion, but because of the strength of his repentance, his struggle against sin, and his humility.
We would do well to remember that St. Moses’ relics are housed at Deir el Baramous, the Monastery in Scetis, Egypt. Once a year on his feast day, the monks exalt the Black body of St. Moses the Strong and process it around the altar and the church. Whenever we and the millions of pilgrims who go there visit, we bow our heads and kiss the relics of St. Moses the Strong’s Black body, taking its blessings, and asking him to remember us in our prayers.
Every Black person is sacred, created in the image of God. St. Moses the Strong’s Black body is holy, and all of us in the church, no matter what our skin color, are all called to this holiness.
May the prayers of St. Moses be with us.
Phoebe Farag Mikhail is the author of Putting Joy into Practice: Seven Ways to Lift Your Spirit from the Early Church (Paraclete Press, 2019). She has also written for Christianity Today, Faith and Leadership, Talking Writing Magazine, and other publications, as well as on her own blog, Being in Community (beingincommunity.com). She serves alongside her husband at St. Antonious & St. Mina Coptic Orthodox Church in East Rutherford, NJ.
