Monday, 1/2/12
The
Church today honors two saints who were bishops in Cappadocia, which is now
part of Turkey. St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzen, along with Basil’s
brother, Gregory of Nyssa went to school together first in Alexandria, then in
Athens. They often puzzled over what the Scriptures had to say about the inner
life of the Blessed Trinity.
Gregory
of Nyssa and Basil had an older sister named Makrina who is also counted among
the saints of the Church. A wealthy woman who had inherited the family property,
Makrina invited the three priest friends to settle in at her estate to work and
pray full time over the mystery of the Trinity.
Using
every passage in the writings of St. Paul and St. John, they clarified our
understanding of many matters. They pointed out that the Bible teaches us that
the Son is of one substance with the Father, not just of a similar substance.
They corrected the idea of Bishop Appolinaris who was saying Jesus was not
truly human. They are particularly remembered for showing us that the inner
life of the Trinity, consisting of an endless exchange of love, can be thought
of as a three-person dance. The Greek version of that dance was called a perichoresus.
I had
never taken any interest in St. Basil and the two Gregories. Their Greek
language and customs were so distant for us. But when I read about big sister
St. Makrina setting the three of them up in a theological think-tank it struck
a familiar note with me. Back in the mid eighteen hundreds Lady Gregory, the
widow of an English lord with an estate in Galway became interested in
preserving older strains of Irish folk literature; and she began inviting
impoverished Irish writers to stay on at her estate, giving themselves to
writing Irish stories in English.
I visited lady Gregory’s
estate some years ago, and I was delighted in finding an old tree where the
greats of Irish writing had carved their names. There was W.B.Yeats John
Millington Singe, Sean O’Casey whose names I recognized. Their productive comradeship
brought me to see what a fine thing St. Makrina had done for Christianity.
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