The Demon Tried to Stop Me: My First Time in an Orthodox Church | Fr. Moses

In this video, Fr. Moses Berry (✝2024) shares a personal account of his first visit to an Orthodox church in Richmond, Virginia. He describes his initial reluctance, the challenges he faced, and the unexpected spiritual impact of the service. Through his honest reflections, Fr. Moses highlights the profound sense of belonging he discovered within the Orthodox tradition.
Archpriest Moses Berry, a beloved priest and founder of Theotokos “Unexpected Joy” Orthodox Church in Ash Grove, Missouri, fell asleep in the Lord on January 12, 2024. He was known for his dedication to Orthodox Christian faith and African American heritage.

Video source: https://youtu.be/ijmAkaP1huk 2022
Fellowship of St. Moses the Black Conference, Pittsburg, PA
Watch more videos on Fellowship of St Moses The Black YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@fellowshipofstmosestheblac6529

Fr. Moses:

Once, my wife and I were invited by a friend to come to Richmond, Virginia, and come to a service with him and just have a little evening of it, and we drove up from Atlanta. We were young and, uh, with no children, so we could just speed down the highway. As a matter of fact, we were speeding down the highway so much that the police stopped us, took us down to the station, and let us go, and we got there. It was about 6:00 in the evening, and my friend John said, “Let’s go to church.” And I thought, “Oh my goodness, of all the things we could do after this long day drive was to go to church.”

And he was a white fellow, and they didn’t want to go to his church anyway, because there’s a certain way that, when an African-American person often shows up at a church that’s all white, you know, they’re either very kind or very suspicious. And, uh, I thought, I don’t want to go there because I don’t want to process this experience that I’m going to be having there. I don’t want them to, you know, to say something to me about, I have a good friend who’s also black. I didn’t want them to say those things to me. So I went inside, and we went up the stairs, the back stairs, to this, um, to this little church, a little house church. Now they have a grand church, so I hear. And the name of the church is St. Cyprien of Carthage, and we went at the back stairs to this little house church, and I remember saying to my wife, “This isn’t even really a church!”

And I didn’t even lower my voice, because I had no respect for those people. And then we went inside the church, and it was very small, maybe about 20 by 30 space, and, uh, and that evening, there were only about four people there, and I suppose now that I’m a seasoned, retired Orthodox priest, maybe that’s not so bad. But it was bad for me at the time, and they were singing something, and I couldn’t quite understand it, and I’m sure that they were speaking in a foreign language. They were speaking in a foreign language, but somehow I could understand it. I could understand what they were saying, but they must be speaking Russian, because the sign said “St. Cyprien of Carthage Russian Church OCA”, and I thought, they’re speaking Russian, but I think maybe I can understand that for, through some miraculous means. But they were actually speaking English. They were speaking English, but this baptism of the soul, this very thing that resonates, that resonated with my… was resonating inside me, and I looked around at the choir, and I thought, “Oh my goodness, three-person choir, that’s no choir.” And sometimes now we only have two. I have one. Oh, we have one.

So I said, “That’s not even a choir.” And then I paid more attention, and it said, “Rejoice, O Virgin, Theotokos! Rejoice, revile of Adam! Rejoice, redemption of the tears of Eve! Rejoice, thou bride unwedded.” And I thought, “Oh my goodness, what kind of language is this? This is another language, and it’s touching something in me, and it’s touching something in me so deep that I can’t even express it. I was on the verge of tears until the priest came out of the iconostasis, and he had a censer in his hand, and he was censing the congregation, and I thought, “Oh, my goodness, I don’t like this church all over again.” Little did I know I was in the midst of spiritual warfare, because the demon who had always been around me from my youth up, who would follow me everywhere I went, was saying, “You don’t want to be in here. Look at these people. First of all, they’re white. Secondly, they have incense. And that, that’s not good. I don’t know why, but it’s not good.”

And the priest came out, and he started to cense the iconostasis, and he censed one-side where I saw that there was an icon of St. Moses the Black, and St. Moses looked just like me, so to speak. He had wide nose, he had kinky hair, he had brown skin, and I thought, “Surely this must be what I’ve been looking for.” And then the demon started poking me again, and he said, “You know what that is? They’re trying to appeal to the people in their neighborhood. They’re trying to reach out to the people in their neighborhood, which is a predominantly African-American neighborhood.” And so that’s what they were doing, trying to reach out to these people. Then I looked on the other side of the iconostasis, and there was an icon of St. Cyprian of Carthage, and he was also, looked like African-American person, or someone of African descent. He was about Fr. Paul’s color, and he had wavy hair, a little short afro, and I thought, “Oh my goodness, what does this mean? This is the flower in God’s garden that I spoke of last night.”

These were the flowers in God’s garden that look like me, and I began to realize that I must join this church at all cost. I must join this church at all costs, no matter what. I went home after I left there and bought a book by Vladimir Lossky, “The meaning of icons”. And I had all these icons in there, and I, I tore them out, or not tore them out, I cut them out neatly and put them on the wall beside my little makeshift icon corner, because I was going to be Orthodox no matter what, because I’d heard something, something from the eternal had touched my life.