Fr Ben Garren

Dear Siblings in Christ,

It was night and he was supposed to be sleeping. But instead he was walking from the well at the monastery out to the farthest hermitages. He carried water for each of his brothers as he battled his own demons.

The memory of the first murder he committed haunted him. What had infuriated him most was getting caught and kicked out to the streets.

Now he placed a bucket of water by the cell of an elderly man whose arthritis made walking to the well in the early morning difficult. Then he went back to the well.

The memory of how his great strength made him a good robber haunted him. He had fought his way to lead a band of robbers to murder and steal along the roads and highways.

Now he placed a water urn by the cell of a man he had once led to kill others—wishing he had never sought to do anything but serve.

The memory of how he used to mock the monks in their austerity haunted him. They were individuals with nothing worth stealing, while he surrounded himself with the finest cloth that could be stolen and ate the richest food he could purchase with his illicit gains.

Now he placed a jug of water by the abbot who guided him in living an austere life, keeping the longings for hurting others for worldly gains in check.

It was that night in a last attempt that the demons brought him to trip over the edge of the well and fall into its depths, He barely made it to an interior ledge away from where the water welled up making a small pool deep under the desert ground.

His brothers found him, got him out of the well, and tended to him for the next year in recovery… and his demons left him.

The story of the Bandit Saint Moses the Black reminds us that the way to overcome our regrets, the demons that haunt us about what we have done and left undone, is to provide care to those we have wronged and those in need—and also to allow others to provide for us and support us when we are in true need.

Pax,

—Ben