Orthodox Life
About victory in the war that we lost - Sergei Komarov.
“The unclean enemy especially wages war on a person through unclean lustful passion, so that a person, darkened by this filth, does not look to God in all his affairs, because only those who are pure in heart will see God.” With these words begins the life of the Monk Moses Ugrin, whose memory the Church honors on August 8. Indeed, Moses defeated that passion that has always, and even more so today, stood and stands at the forefront of the devil’s army of temptations. Fornication, which has toppled many great pillars, is indeed capable of hiding the face of God from a person and completely robbing a person, depriving him of his mind and will. This passion eats away the soul from the inside, leaving behind despondency, madness, insensitivity to everything spiritual, and inevitably gives rise to subsequent links of destructive passions. Complete victory over fornication, at the level of thoughts and feelings, is a rare phenomenon even in the vast world of Christian saints. It is precisely this kind of victory that we celebrate on the day of remembrance of the great saint, the Venerable Moses Ugrin.
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Being a Hungarian by origin (Ugrin means Hungarian), Moses served in the squad of the passion-bearing prince Boris. After the murder of Boris by his brother, Svyatopolk the Accursed, Moses hid in Kyiv, and in 1018 he ended up in Poland, becoming a prisoner of King Boleslav. There a rich Polish widow fell in love with him and bought him, wanting to make him her partner. Having encountered a refusal, she came up with various means, trying in every possible way to seduce the young man. She dressed him in luxurious clothes, fed him delicious dishes, showed him the wealth of her estates, forced the servants to bow before him, and called him her husband. The king himself begged the monk to take the woman as his wife. The Polish slaves also persuaded Moses. The life contains interesting dialogues about marriage and celibacy, put into the mouths of Moses and the servants of the depraved widow.
Servants: “Does not Christ say in the Gospel: For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh (Matthew 19:5). Likewise the apostle: It is better to marry than to become inflamed (1 Cor. 7:9). He also speaks about widows: I want young widows to marry (1 Tim. 5:14)... Who abhorred the women of the first righteous people, like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?.. Joseph first fled from the woman, but then he took a wife.”
Moses: “If many righteous people have been saved with their wives, I alone am a sinner and cannot be saved with my wife. But, if Joseph had listened to Potiphar’s wife before, he would not have reigned later when he took a wife for himself in Egypt (Gen. 39 and 41). God, seeing his previous patience, gave him the kingdom of Egypt, which is why he is glorified in his generation for his chastity, although he had children. I do not desire the kingdom of Egypt, and not to dominate the authorities... but I despised all this for the sake of the kingdom above. Therefore, if I leave the hands of this woman alive, I will never look for another wife, but, with God’s help, I will become a monk. For what did Christ say in the Gospel? Everyone who leaves house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for My name’s sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life (Matthew 19:29). Should I listen more to you or to Christ? The Apostle says: The unmarried man is concerned about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord, but the married man is concerned about the things of the world, how to please his wife (1 Cor. 7:32-33). I will ask you, for whom is it appropriate to work - for the Lord or for the wife? I also know what he writes: Slaves, listen to your masters, but in good, not in evil; So understand, you who hold me, that female beauty will never seduce me and will not tear me away from Christ’s love.”
This confrontation ended with the Athonite hieromonk passing through Poland tonsuring Moses into monasticism. The woman, having learned about this, became furious and ordered the sufferer to be tied to the bed, intending to rape him. But even when she began to caress him, he, with his prayer and incredible effort of will, forced his body to be completely dead to sin. Then the noblewoman ordered to stretch the monk and give him a hundred blows with sticks every day, and then ordered him to be castrated. Soon a rebellion broke out in Poland, the evil widow was killed, and Moses, who miraculously survived, suffering from severe wounds, came to the Kiev Pechersk Monastery. There he lived for another ten years. For his great victory, the Lord gave him the power to help other people overcome the passion of fornication. So, one brother, tormented by lust, came to the monk for help. “I promise to observe until death everything that you command me,” he said. Moses said, “Never speak a single word to a woman in your entire life.” Brother promised. Then the monk, like the biblical Moses, who performed great miracles with his rod, touched the monk’s chest with his cane - and he was immediately healed. Moses did not lose God's gift of helping others even after death. The Life of John the Long-Suffering describes how Saint John, struggling with fornication, buried himself up to his shoulders in a cave, opposite the relics of the Monk Moses. But even then lust did not leave him. John received healing only after the Lord told him to pray to the dead man lying in front of him. Subsequently, John himself freed another monk from the same passion, commanding him to apply the bone of Moses Ugrin to his body.
The relics of St. Moses Ugrin in the Near Caves of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra
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The life of Moses is amazing not only for the courage of the monk, the strength of his patience and faith. It is striking in its very precedent. A young, handsome man, not even being a monk, refuses, in order to preserve his virginity, everything that millions of people seek as the greatest happiness: wealth, power, an advantageous marriage with a luxurious woman. And not only refuses, but also suffers terrible torment. As we see, not only the widow and her servants, but also the king himself could not understand his choice. Give up something that many can only dream of!
I once retold life to teenagers in Sunday school. I spoke and felt that they did not understand. Of course, it is worth making allowances for age - children are not able to understand everything. But nevertheless, a huge semantic gap was obvious between what our children are taught at school and on the street, and what they hear in the Church. There, behind the temple walls, there is an ideology called “Take everything from life.” Here: “Give up the visible for the invisible.” School and street - six days a week, Church - a couple of hours a week. Whose image will win in their life? Moisey Ugrin or Selena Gomez? Don't know. God knows.
What about children! We, believing adults, are ourselves imbued with the hedonistic philosophy of the world and often act according to its wolfish laws. In a world of feelings and thoughts closed from other people, an internal choice “not for the sake of Jesus, but for the sake of a bite of bread” can occur daily, hourly. You may not have big money, but dream about it; to be far from power, but to desire it; to be a respectable family man, but at the same time carry a red-hot volcano of lust inside of you. And a war lost inside, under the necessary circumstances, can easily move into the outside world and end up in the next report of a criminal chronicle.
Who is not sick with fornication, in thoughts or secret desires? Who hasn't been touched by the clawed paw of this monster? Monk or layman, priest or simple Christian, man or woman, teenager or pensioner - who does not experience the attack of a dangerous passion that parasitizes the laws of nature? And who is completely indifferent to a banknote? Who wouldn't like to boss someone around? The Monk Moses Ugrin, whose relics rest in the Near Caves of the Kiev Lavra, awaits all of us, monastics and laymen, priests and ordinary parishioners, equally infected with all the diseases of this century, for repentance, promising immediate help.
There is a unique place in the caves for all fornicators - the space between the relics of the Monks Moses Ugrin and John the Long-Suffering. Often there you can see a woman crying bitterly or a gloomy-looking man with his head bowed. And every believer, passing by the saints of God, will kneel and pray for cleansing of the mind and heart and protection from the demon of fornication. In the shrine containing the relics of St. John there is a small hole from which emanates the sweet fragrance of the holy relics. It is noticeable only if you kneel down. They say that a person who has fallen into actual fornication will not feel the smell. Perhaps the Lord arranged it this way to remind the sinner, who has sunk to the very bottom of fornication, of repentance and the undoubted prayerful intercession of those who completely defeated fornication during their lifetime.
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The writer of the life of the Monk Moses counts sixteen years of his feat and connects each period with the name of the biblical saint. During the five years of captivity, the monk showed Job’s patience. In the sixth year he suffered for his purity, like Joseph. In ten years of silence in the cave, he shone like the first Moses, who brought the Ten Commandments to Israel, and was also honored to be a seer of God, because it is said: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8). If we continue such comparisons, we will come to identify the Kyiv Lavra and Kyiv with Russian Jerusalem and will not come up with anything new, because many said this long before us.
Such associations will clearly be an accusation towards those who live near the walls of the most ancient monastery in Rus' or have the opportunity to reach it within a few hours, but neglect this gift of God. The Divine Lavra calls to its shrines from afar - with the ringing of bells, the radiance of domes, countless books and films dedicated to it. There are still many who live near the Kyiv hills, but while they hear, they don’t hear and, while they see, they don’t see. Lavra prays for them and waits.
The Monks Anthony and Theodosius, Saint Agapit, the incomprehensible Mark the Grave Digger, the formidable Ilya of Muromets, the terrible for demons St. Isaac the Recluse and a great many other saints of God are waiting, ready to listen and prayerfully help. The underground cell of the Near Caves also awaits us, in the blessed silence of which rest the relics of an amazing ascetic who showed us a great example of love for God, for virginity, for monasticism. The holiness of the saint calls us to his tomb to cry, to pray, to ask. Let us come to him - and the fervent prayer of Moses will pick up our weak sighs and lift them high, high, to the throne of God. Let us come so that we too can take something from his fire. Let us come to learn to believe, endure, hope, love, and keep ourselves from the lusts of the world. Let us come to understand the significance and greatness of those shrines next to which we live. Let us come there to say: “Reverend Father Moses, pray to God for us!”
Sergey Komarov
Mercenary's Wanderings
Ugrin is not a surname, but a nickname: Moses was a “Ugrin,” that is, a Hungarian. He and two brothers came to serve the Rostov prince Boris - and, by the way, one of these brothers, Ephraim , subsequently founded the Boris and Gleb Monastery in Torzhok.
When Boris was killed in 1015 on the orders of his brother Svyatopolk the Accursed , the new Kiev government (Kiev was then the main city of the Russian land) began repressions against the entourage of the former prince. Moses managed to take refuge with Predislava , sister of Boris and Gleb . A year later, another of their brothers ( Vladimir Svyatoslavich , the baptist of Russia, had a lot of children) Yaroslav , later nicknamed the Wise , expelled Svyatopolk from Kiev, and Moses returned to service. But, as it turned out, it was premature: Svyatopolk, who fled to Poland, brought from there the troops of King Boleslav the Brave and regained the princely throne. Moses was taken captive and sent to Poland.
What functions Moses performed under Boris is unclear. Most likely, he was a simple mercenary in the princely retinue - then there were many of them feeding in the cities and villages of Rus', which was gaining strength. However, misadventures in Polish dungeons radically changed the mind of the young Hungarian. He made a vow: if he manages to free himself and return to Kyiv, he will take monastic vows there.
