St. Gregory of Nyssa (335-394 CE), who came from an illustrious Christian family of Capadocia, became bishop of the small town of Nyssa in 371 and is known as one of the founders of mystical theology in the Church. In The Life of Moses , one of the most important books in the study of Christian mysticism, Gregory retells the story of Moses's life from the biblical account in Exodus and Numbers and then refers back to these stories as the basis for profound spiritual lessons. The ultimate goal of Gregory's spirituality is to strive for infinite progress in the never-completed journey to God. His exhortations to lead a life of virtue will inspire all who hope to increase their knowledge and love of God. St. Gregory of Nyssa (335-394 CE), who came from an illustrious Christian family of Capadocia, became bishop of the small town of Nyssa in 371 and is known as one of the founders of mystical theology in the Church. In The Life of Moses , one of the most important books in the study of Christian mysticism, Gregory retells the story of Moses's life from the biblical account in Exodus and Numbers and then refers back to these stories as the basis for profound spiritual lessons. The ultimate goal of Gregory's spirituality is to strive for infinite progress in the never-completed journey to God. His exhortations to lead a life of virtue will inspire all who hope to increase their knowledge and love of God. The HarperCollins Spiritual Classics series presents short, accessible introductions to the foundational works that shaped Western religious thought and culture. This series seeks to find new readers for these dynamic spiritual voices -- voices that have changed lives throughout the centuries and still can today. Gregory of Nyssa The Life of Moses By James HarperCollins Spiritual Classics HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 2006 James HarperCollins Spiritual Classics All right reserved. ISBN: 0060754648 Chapter One Birth and Childhood Moses was born at the time Pharaoh issued the decree for male offspring to be destroyed. How shall we as a matter of choice imitate this fortuitous birth of Moses? Someone will rightly raise the objection that it does not lie within our power to imitate in our own birth that famous birth. But it is not hard to begin the imitation with this seeming difficulty. Everyone knows that anything placed in a world of change never remains the same, but is always passing from one state to another, the alteration always bringing about something better or worse. The narrative is to be understood according to its real intention. For the material and passionate disposition to which human nature is carried when it falls is the female form of life, whose birth is favored by the tyrant. The austerity and intensity of virtue is the male birth, which is hostile to the tyrant and suspected of insurrection against his rule. Now, it is certainly required that what is subject to change be in a sense always coming to birth. In mutable nature nothing can be observed that is always the same. Being born, in the sense of constantly experiencing change, does not come about as the result of external initiative, as is the case with the birth of the body, which takes place by chance. Such a birth occurs by choice. We are in some manner our own parents, giving birth to ourselves by our own free choice in accordance with whatever we wish to be, whether male or female, molding ourselves to the teaching of virtue or vice. We can most certainly enter upon a better birth into the realm of light, however much the unwilling tyrant is distressed, and we can be seen with pleasure and be given life by the parents of this goodly offspring, even though it is contrary to the design of the tyrant. (The rational faculties are what become the "parents of . . . virtue.") When we lay bare the hidden meaning of the history, Scripture is seen to teach that the birth which distresses the tyrant is the beginning of the virtuous life. I am speaking of that kind of birth in which free will serves as the midwife, delivering the child amid great pain. For no one causes grief to his antagonist unless he exhibits in himself those marks which give proof of his victory over the other. It is the function of the free will to beget this virtuous male offspring, to nourish it with proper food, and to take forethought how to save it unharmed from the water. For there are those who present their children to the tyrant, delivering them naked and without forethought to the stream. I am speaking of life as a stream made turbulent by the successive waves of passion, which plunge what is in the stream under the water and drown it. Whenever life demands that the sober and provident rational thoughts which are the parents of the male child launch their good child on the billows of this life, they make him safe in an ark, so that when he is given to the stream he will not be drowned. The ark, constructed out of various boards,