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The Catholic Church has recognized over ten thousand saints. Most people couldn't name five. Everyday Saints tells the real stories — not the stained-glass versions. Every week, host John O'Connor sits down with the life of one saint, told in plain language for regular people with real jobs, real doubts, and real lives. No theology degree required. Just honest stories about flawed, complicated humans who somehow became extraordinary. Whether you're a lifelong Catholic, a curious skeptic, or somewhere in between — pull up a chair. These stories are worth knowing.
A man is standing over a body he just killed,
who was moments before kneeling at his feet.
His name is Moses. He is the most feared criminal
in the Nile Valley, leader of a gang of 75
violent men. But this is not the last time someone
will kneel at his feet. By the end of his life,
this same man, murderer, slave, bandit, wanted
by every authority in Egypt, will be one of
the most gentle, wise, and beloved figures in
the history of Christianity. Bishops will travel
days to sit with him. Thousands will seek his
counsel. He will choose to die rather than
raise his hand in violence ever again. Hi, my
name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday
Saints. This is the story of St. Moses the
Black.
We are in Egypt, around 330 AD. The Roman Empire
is cracking at the edges. Christianity just
became legal. Constantine converted in 312.
And out in the Egyptian desert, something strange
is happening. People are walking away from civilization
entirely, moving into the wilderness to pray,
to fast, to build a new kind of life. the desert
fathers and mothers. We will come back to
them. But first, Moses. Moses was a slave, large,
physically imposing in a way most people remembered.
Strong enough that even among men who valued
strength, he stood out. And by every account,
he was completely unmanageable. He stole from
his master. He was suspected of murder. Eventually,
His master had had enough and cast him out.
Moses did what a large, strong, violent man
with no prospects did in 4th century Egypt.
He found a gang. Not a small one. Moses joined
a band of outlaws roaming the Nile Valley, and
by sheer force of physical presence and an
absolute fearlessness, he rose to lead it. 75
men. Some sources say more. robbing travelers,
terrorizing villages, killing when necessary
and sometimes when not. The mere mention of
his name made communities bar their doors. One
story from this period tells you everything.
A barking dog interrupted one of his raids,
alerting the household before he could finish
the robbery. Moses, well, he was furious. He
swore revenge on the dog's owner. He came back
the next night, sword in his mouth. swam the
Nile in the dark, found the owner's hut. The
owner had been warned again and hidden. So Moses
killed four of the man's sheep instead, swam
back across the river with them and sold their
fleeces for wine. That is who Moses was. A
man who swam a river at night with his sword
in his mouth to settle a score just over a
barking dog. And then one night, Running from
local authorities after some especially dangerous
period of criminal work, Moses found himself
in the desert and stumbled into something he
had not expected. The desert of Scythes, Wadi
el-Natran in northwestern Egypt, was, by the
late fourth century, home to one of the most
unusual communities in the ancient world.
Men who had walked away from cities and careers
and families and comfort every ordinary ambition
to live in the wilderness, praying, fasting,
working toward a kind of interior purification
most of the world considered either admirable
or plain out insane. Moses arrived not as a
seeker, no, he arrived as a fugitive running
from something, stumbling onto something else
entirely. What he found stopped him. These men
had nothing, less than nothing. No weapons,
no wealth worth stealing, no power a Roman official
would recognize. They almost owned nothing
and wanted nothing more. And they were at peace
in a way Moses had never encountered in a human
being. Picture that contrast. A man whose entire
life was organized around taking things by
force, food, money, safety, dominance. standing
in a community where none of those things existed.
And the people were more settled, more genuinely
content than anyone he had ever robbed or terrorized.
The abbot was a man named Isiador. When Moses
appeared, large, dark, dangerous, a man whose
reputation preceded him, Isiador did not run.
He did not call for help. He showed Moses hospitality.
fed him, talked to him. Moses told him he wanted
to know the God these monks had found. He refused
to leave until they accepted him. Isiah door
accepted him. It was not a smooth transition.
And here's the part of the Moses's story that
I find most honest, most relatable, and most
worth slowing down for. He did not walk into
that desert and immediately become a saint.
No, he walked in carrying everything that he
had ever been. The process of becoming someone
different was slow, difficult, and occasionally
embarrassing. He struggled with violence. As
old habits, they do not disappear because you've
just merely decided to change. One night robbers
broke into Moses's living cell. men much like
what he himself had been. Moses overpowered
all four of them and then, this detail is so
human, he dragged them to the chapel where
the other monks were praying and dumped them
in front of the community. He said, I do not
think it is Christian to hurt them, but I did
not know what else to do with them. The robbers
confronted with overwhelming physical force
and complete moral bewilderment, converted
on the spot and joined the monastery. He struggled
with discouragement. He became convinced that
he was not making progress fast enough, that
his past was too heavy, his sins too many,
his character too damaged. He went to Abbot
Isador in despair. Isador took him to the roof
before dawn. They sat together and watched the
first light of sunrise over the desert, darkness
replaced by light, one degree at a time. Isiador
said, and I quote, only slowly do the rays
of the sun drive away the night and usher in
a new day. And thus, only slowly does one
become a perfect contemplative. Moses sat with
that. and kept going. He struggled with lust.
The Desert Fathers were remarkably honest about
this. The absence of external distractions
did not make internal temptations just disappear.
It often made them louder. Moses, who had lived
by appetite his entire life, found the appetites
did not simply stop because he had decided
they should. He prayed. He fasted. He worked
harder physically to exhaust himself. And gradually,
over the years, the struggle quieted. And
he struggled with pride in a way he could never
have predicted. The pride of a man once feared
everywhere, now overlooked and dismissed. In
the desert community, former Roman noblemen
sat at the feet of illiterate peasant farmers.
Educated philosophers called unlettered monks
their spiritual fathers. And Moses, a large,
dark-skinned African man of slave origin and
criminal history, was, by every social measure
of the Roman world, at the very bottom. When
he was being considered for ordination as a
priest, the archbishop secretly instructed his
clergy to test Moses' humility. They drove
him from the sanctuary with racial insults.
Go away Ethiopian, you don't belong here. Moses
walked out without a word. And when they called
him back and ordained him, the archbishop said,
Moses, now you are entirely white. He had passed
a test most men of his physical capability
and personal history could not have passed.
Not because he had no dignity, because he understood
something about where dignity actually came
from. Now Moses by his 70s was one of the most
respected figures in the desert Christian world.
Around him were approximately 75 disciples,
the same number of men he had once led in crime.
Now that symmetry is not lost on anyone who
knows his story. Ordained at 60, he continued
teaching, counseling, praying for 15 more years.
Then word came, Raiders were heading up towards
the monastery at Scythes. The brothers, well,
they wanted to take up weapons and fight, but
Moses, no, he forbade it. He told them to flee
if they wanted to live. He would not run and
he would not fight. He had lived by the sword
for the first half of his life. And he had said
more than once that a violent death was probably
the appropriate end for a man of his history.
He quoted the scripture he knew so well. All
who take the sword will perish by the sword.
Seven brothers chose to stay with him. The
raiders arrived. Moses and his seven companions
stood and greeted them without weapons, without
defense, without resistance. They were all
martyred, all eight of them. One brother had
hid and watched. He said afterward that he saw
a light descend from heaven with crowns, one
for each of them. Moses was 75 years old. He
had spent roughly the first 40 years of his
life as a slave, a murderer, and a bandit. He
had spent the last 35 years becoming one of
the most gentle, wise, and beloved men in the
desert. All right, back on the porch. The thing
I keep returning to with Moses is that sentence
he said to the monks after dragging the robbers
into the chapel. Do you remember it? I do not
think it is Christian to hurt them, but I did
not know what else to do with them. That is
not the sentence of a man who has achieved
holiness. That is the sentence of a man in the
middle of becoming it. Still carrying his old
reflexes, still uncertain what the new ones
should be, and doing the best he can with what
he has so far. And I think that's exactly where
most of us actually live. Not at the beginning,
not at the end. but somewhere in the middle
of a process. We are not sure is working fast
enough. Remember, Moses was discouraged. He
went to his abbot, convinced he was failing,
and Isiah took him to watch a sunrise. Slowly,
that's the word, only slowly do the rays of
the sun drive away the night. We want transformation
to be sudden. know I do. The Damascus Road,
the blinding light, the voice, the immediate
reversal from the last episode. And sometimes
it is. But more often, it is a sunrise. Gradual,
imperceptible moment to moment. Real only when
you look back from a distance and realize the
dark is gone. Moses the murderer became Moses
the martyr. Not in a single moment. Over 35
years of slow, difficult, and occasionally
embarrassing work. Of dragging robbers into
chapels because he did not know what else to
do with them. Sitting on rooftops watching the
light come in. I'll be honest, I've been sitting
with this myself since I started researching
Moses. There are areas of my own life where
I've been discouraged for exactly this reason.
Where the progress feels invisible because
I'm measuring against how far I still have to
go rather than turning around and looking at
how far I've already come. Moses' story is a
rebuke to that kind of accounting and not a
gentle one, a firm one. So here's the practical
challenge this week. Think about the area of
your life where you are most discouraged about
your lack of progress. The habit that won't
break, the pattern that keeps returning, the
version of yourself you thought you'd had left
behind by now. And ask yourself honestly, Are
you judging your sunrise by the darkness still
there or by how much light has already come
in? Because those are two completely different
measurements of the same morning. And now it
is time for the closing prayer. Lord, thank
you for Moses. Thank you for a man who swam
a river at night with a sword in his teeth
and ended up dying with his hands open greeting
the people who came to kill him. For everyone
listening who is in the middle of their slow
transformation, who is discouraged because
they are not further along than they are, remind
them of the sunrise. Remind them that slow
is not the same as stopped, that the light already
coming in is real, even if the dark is still
visible. on the horizon. And for anyone who
feels their past is too heavy, their history
too damaged, their sins too many to be genuinely
transformed, give them Moses, a man who led
75 criminals and ended up shepherding 75 monks.
Same number, but completely different direction.
We love you, even in the slow mornings. Amen.
As always, one more thing before we go. Moses
the Black is the patron saint of African Americans,
which makes perfect sense for a man who was
himself enslaved, who bore racial contempt throughout
his Christian life, and who responded to every
instance of it with a dignity that came from
somewhere his tormentors could not reach. He
is also venerated as a patron against temptation,
for obvious reasons. and as a model of repentance
for anyone who believes their past disqualifies
them from a future. There is a parish in Detroit,
St. Moses the Black Catholic Church, serving
the African American Catholic community since
the 1990s, one of the few parishes in the
United States named after him. If you're ever
in Detroit, it's worth knowing it exists. His
relics are in the monastery of the Virgin Mary
of Peromios in Egypt's Wadi al-Natran, the same
desert where he lived, prayed, and died 17
centuries ago. People still go there, still
pray there, still sit in the desert where the
light comes in slowly and ask for what Moses
found. His feast day is August 28th. The man
who swam a river with a sword in his teeth to
settle a score over a barking dog. Patron of
the gentle. Martyr of the desert. Well, that
is episode 10 of Everyday Saints. If Moses'
story moves you, share it. One person, someone
who needs to hear that slow is not the same
as stopped. Leave a review if you have a minute.
It genuinely helps more people find the show.
And if you've noticed any some switching of
even changes to the audio as well as the formatting
of the show and the length of the show, I'm
working some things out, trying some things,
so just bear with me for a couple weeks. But
next week, a name you absolutely know, a story
almost nobody actually knows, and a moment of
grace so unexpected it's been argued about
by scholars for 2,000 years. I'm John O'Connor.
Thanks for sitting on the porch with me and
I will see you next week.