Prince Boleslav ordered the woman to come to him and bring Moses. When his command was fulfilled, and he saw the monk, he greatly exhorted the monk to take that wife, but he did not persuade him. At last he said to him: "Who is so insensible as you, that you deprive yourself of many blessings and honor, and give yourself over to bitter torments? Know from now on that it is up to you to choose life or death: or, having fulfilled the will of your lady, to be honored with us and have great power, or, disobeying, after fierce torments, to accept a cruel death." He also said to the woman: "Let the captive you have bought not be free, but, as a mistress, do with your servant what you will, so that others do not dare to disobey their masters." Our venerable father Moses answered him: "What profit is it to a man (saith the Lord), if he shall gain the whole world, he shall forsake his own soul; Or what will a man give treason for his soul? That you promise me honor and glory, which you yourself will soon lose, and that the grave will receive you, who have nothing; in the same way this vile woman will be killed in an evil way" (and so it happened according to the prediction of the monk).

But before that, the woman, having gained even greater power over him, shamelessly inclined him to sin even more, so that she ordered him to be forcibly laid on her bed, embraced and kissed him, but even by this deception she could not attract him to her desire. The monk said: "In vain, woman, are thy efforts; do not think that I do not commit this sin, because I am foolish or cannot do it, but because of the fear of God, and I abhor you, unclean." Having received such an answer, the woman ordered him to be given a hundred strokes daily, and then ordered to cut off his secret limbs. The Monk Moses lay as if dead from a hemorrhage, barely breathing.

Interfering in this matter and wishing to please the woman even more, for the sake of the greatness of her family and his affection for her, Boleslav raised a great persecution against the Chernorizians and expelled all of them from his region. And God soon avenged His servants. In one night, Boleslav suddenly died, and a strong revolt took place throughout the Lyash land. The people rebelled, beat the bishops and boyars, and among them was killed that shameless woman.

Of this wrath of God, which occurred after the expulsion of the Chernorizians for the tonsure of the Monk Moses, many years later the great prince of Kiev Izyaslav was reminded by his princess, by birth Lyakhovitsa, the daughter of Boleslav, urging him insistently not to expel from her region the Monk Anthony with his brethren for tonsuring the blessed Barlaam and Ephraim the eunuch. But let's turn to the present.

Our venerable father Moses, gathering a little strength, came to the cave to the Monk Anthony, bearing upon himself the wounds of martyrdom, like a brave soldier of Christ, and he lived pleasing to God, asceticizing in fasting, prayer, vigil and all the monastic virtues, by which he conquered to the end all the snares of the unclean enemy.

For his many victories over the prodigal passions, which tempted this monk, the Lord granted him the power to help others to overcome the same passions. A certain brother, struggling with the passion of fornication, came to the monk and besought help for him. "I promise to keep it unto death," he said, "if thou wilt command me to do anything!" The monk said to him: "Never in all thy life speak a single word to a woman." He promised with zeal. Then the saint, imitating the first Moses, who worked miracles with a rod, touched his brother's bosom with his rod, without which he could not walk because of the pain of the wounds he had received before, and suddenly all the impure passions in the body of that brother became dead, and from that time there were no more temptations for him.

This good soldier of Christ in the midst of his sufferings reached the sixteenth year of his God-pleasing feat; five years innocently tormented, he showed patience to Job to those who took him prisoner, and in the sixth year he bravely suffered more for his purity than Joseph; then, by a ten-year silence equal to the angels in a cave, transmitted from the holy Mount Athos, he shone before the others, like the first Moses with a tenfold law, transmitted through angels from the holy Mount Sinai. And our Monk Moses was truly vouchsafed to be a God-seer, he turned out to be worthy of the blessedness of the pure in heart. And, in order to see God face to face, he migrated in the month of July on the 26th day, while the Monk Anthony was still alive, in whose cave lie the incorruptibly miraculous relics of this saint, who had not corrupted the purity of the man.

Even after death, Saint Moses conquers the impure passions with his relics, as St. John the Much-Suffering experienced. Shutting himself up in the cave and digging himself up to his shoulders against the relics of the Monk Moses, after many sufferings for the victory of the prodigal passion, he heard the voice of the Lord to pray to the dead man who was opposite him, the Monk Moses Ugrin. When the Long-suffering One fulfilled this, he was delivered from unclean warfare. Likewise, the same Saint John delivered another passionate brother from the same dirty trick, when he gave to the one suffering from passion one bone from the relics of the Monk Moses, in order to apply it to his body, as it is described in the Life of the Monk John the Much-Suffering.

Let us also, having been delivered from all impurity, have the Monk Moses as a leader, instructing by his prayers on the path of salvation, so that with him we may worship the Person in the Trinity of the worshipped God, to Whom be glory now and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

The Life of Our Venerable Father John the Much-Suffering

(July 18)

For the sake of virginity, he suffered a lot and buried himself alive in the ground up to his chest.

With the words of the "teacher of the tongues" "through much tribulation we must enter into the Kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22), according to the words of the beloved disciple of Jesus John the Virgin, who said: "I, John, am your brother and partaker in tribulation" (Rev. 1:9), and the life of the beloved disciple of the Most Holy Theotokos of the Caves, our Russian virgin John, called the Much-Suffering One, agrees with the same words. He endured many sorrows for the sake of virginity, dedicated to the heavenly Bridegroom. The Long-suffering One himself, already at the point of death, told his entire life for the following reason.

Often one of the brethren came to this monk, who had shut himself up in a dark place in the cave of the Monk Anthony and had spent his whole life there, struggling with the devil's suggestion to carnal lust. And he besought the saint to pray to the Lord for the weakening of his passions. The Monk John said to him: "Be of good courage, brother, and let thy heart be strong, be patient with the Lord and guard His ways, and leave thee not in the hands of our enemies, and shall not deliver thee up as a prey to their teeth." His brother, tempted by passion, answered him: "Believe me, father, if you do not give me relief, then I will never rest and will move from place to place." The Monk John said to him: "Why do you want to give yourself over to be devoured by the enemy, to be like a man who stands near an abyss, to whom the enemy has come and suddenly pushed him down, and there is a heavy fall for such a man, so that he can no longer get up. But if you remain here, in the holy monastery, you will be like a man standing far from the abyss, whom the enemy, although he draws with effort, is unable to push him aside, and so the Lord with your patience will lead you out of the pit of passions and from the darkness of impurity. But listen to me, brother. I will tell you all that has happened to me since my youth." And then he began to tell his whole life in detail, saying this: