Lies of the Desert Fathers Reading The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, I came across at least two accounts of the Fathers lying to or deceiving people


  10 . Once a provincial judge heard of Abba Moses and went  to Scete to see
  him. They told the old man that he was on his  way, and he rose up to
  flee into a marsh. The judge and his  train met him, and asked: "Tell
  me, old man, where is the cell  of Abba Moses?" And the old man said:
  "Why do you want to  see him? He is a fool and a heretic."
  The judge came to the church, and said to the clergy: "I  heard of
  Abba Moses and came to see him- But an old man on  his way to Egypt
  met me, and I asked him where was the cell  of Abba Moses. And he
  said: 'Why are you looking for him? He  is a fool and a heretic.* "
  And the clergy were distressed and  said: "What sort of person was
  your old man who told you this  about the holy man?" And they said:
  "He was an old man, tall  and dark, wearing the oldest possible
  clothes.'* And the clergy  said: "That was Abba Moses. And he told you
  this about him-  self because he did not want you to see him." And the
  judge  went away much edified.
  
  17 . A magistrate came to see Abba Simon one day. When he heard  of it, he
  put on his apron and went out to attend to a palm-tree.  When the
  visitors arrived they called out to him, 'Old man, where  is the
  anchorite?' He replied, 'There is no anchorite here.' Hearing  these
  words, they went away again.


Source: THE SAYINGS OF THE FATHERS, PART VIII in "The Library Of Christian Classics Volume XII. Western Asceticism" by Owen Chadwick, 1958

Having read many other anecdotes about the Desert Fathers and knowing how much they valued eremitic lifestyle and detachment from the world I take the behavior of these two abbas as an attempt to avoid being bothered by unexpected and random visitors lest they disturb their seclusion and peace of mind.

Abba Moses (the protagonist of the first anecdote above) is recorded as saying


  10 . "A man who avoids men is like a ripe grape. A man who companies with men is like a sour grape"


Source: ibid, Part II

Various sources, for example gotquestions.org, assert that lying is regarded as a sinful act.

So I would guess that by being deliberately untruthful these Fathers not only acted presumably unethically and sinfully, they also acted against the ethos of Jesus's teachings expressed in such saying as


  If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to
  the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to
  borrow from you.


Mt 5:41-42

In the quoted stories the visitors were going to ask for advice and borrow some wisdom, which they were denied under false pretenses, although in the first case the visitor is said to have still derived benefit from witnessing the abba's humbleness, which nevertheless could have been a byproduct and not the original intent.

My question thus is whether and how these Fathers' deceptive behavior could be justified from the Christian doctrine point of view, either Catholic or Greek Orthodox denomination?


Obviously the purpose of these anecdotes was and is to serve as
examples of good Christian ascetic conduct and so recording these two
particular ones their authors must've not viewed the conduct of the
abbas as either deceitful or as a morally reproachable deceit (if
deceit can be morally neutral or even positive) possibly knowing a good excuse for it.
Truth is in the 'eye of the beholder'.

What the other people thought about Abba Moses may not necessarily have portrayed him correctly. An alternative explanation is that Abba Moses had low thoughts about himself, according to the old saying:


  Mat 23:12 (NIV) "For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted".


The judge seems to have been taking it that way, anyway, which is reflected in the words of the storyteller: "the judge went away much edified".