Wednesday,
1/2/13
Today we honor St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzas. They
were Greek speaking bishops in the middle of the fourth century. We usually
think of them in conjunction with another Gregory, Basil’s brother, who became
the bishop of Nyssa. The three had
studied together in Alexandria and Athens.
My interest in them was aroused when I came across St.
Makrina, the older sister of Basil and Gregory of Nyssa. I read that Makrina
had turned her estate into a Theological think-tank for the three young men.
She encouraged them to ponder the mystery of the Holy Spirit.
Makrina put me in mind of Ireland’s Lady Gregory who lived
fifteen hundred years later. Lady Gregory, as a wealthy Protestant child, had
an Irish-speaking nurse who filled her imagination with Irish legends. After her husband, Lord Gregory, died
she turned her estate at Coole in Galway into a haven where the writers of Ireland’s
renaissance literature. I visited there, getting a kick out of finding the tree
where W. B. Yeats, Sean O’Casey, and John Millington Synge had carved their
names.
Makrina’s brothers, Basil and Gregory, along with Gregory
Nazianzas, were to become noted bishops, but it was their collaboration as
Makrina’s guests that benefited us most. They worked out the deeper meanings in
passages of John’s Gospel and Paul’s Letters. As well, the three of them took
to appearing together as a debating team. In those debates they corrected the
mistakes of Semi-Arians who saw the Son’s substance as only similar to the
Father’s. They straightened out the followers of Bishop Appolinaris who had
denied the human nature of their Lord.
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