Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Best Saint's Life Ever

Come Sunday, we remember two African saints. Egg readers are surely familiar with Augustine of Hippo: a pear orchard; a stewpot of unholy loves; the Manichaeans and Neo-Platonists; Monica's patience; Ambrose's reading skills. Above all, we enjoy his decades-long battle against Pelagianism, both semi- and otherwise. From there, straight on to the Reformation.

But Moses the Black is not quite such a household name. To refresh our memory, we googled him today, and came across what must surely be the most snappily-written vita of a saint we have ever encountered. (It comes from a site called Badass of the Week, which advertises "an unnecessarily copious amount of profanity." Just so's ya know.) Here's the lede:

When most people think, "Orthodox Christian Saint", the first phrase that pops into their heads generally isn't "skull-crushing badass". Saints are supposed to be skinny bearded dudes in ratty burlap robes who sit around in caves surrounded by lepers. These poor hermits generally earn the right to carry the mantle of Sainthood for accomplishing some crazy abstract nonsense like philosophizing about the nature of the Trinity, writing a bunch of incomprehensible dogmatic theses about God-knows-what, and/or generally just talking about how awesome the Church is. That's just the nature of Christianity; you don't get served Holy Bacon Strips at Jesus' breakfast table when you spend your life face-punching jerks unconscious, setting farmhouses on fire, and threatening people with knives. That is, unless you're Saint Moses the Black.

And:

Well I guess adopting the holy orders and devoting your life to God is great and all, but when you've spent your entire natural life chokeslamming dillholes spine-first onto the Great Pyramid of Cheops, some times old habits are a little hard to break. Not long after Moses joined the monastic community, a group of four cutthroat thieves broke into the church and started looting holy artifacts and stealing money from the collection plate. Well, as we have noted previously, Moses fully dedicated himself to whatever it was he was doing all of the goddamned time. He may have become a monk to escape prosecution, but he was devoted to his calling - and a dude like Moses sure as shit wasn't going to sit around and let some punk hoodlums disrespect his new home. He stood up, cracked his knucles, spit, and took two steps towards the assembled, dagger-wielding cabal of robbers and murderers.
So how did it turn out? Click the link, for pete's sake.

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