Dcn Leah Sandwell-Weiss
Almighty God, who have revealed to your Church your eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like your bishop Gregory of Nazianzus, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who live and reign for ever and ever.
Today we recognize Gregory of Nazianzus, a 4th Century theologian and saint. Reading about his life, as you can do at http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/155.html, and at https://prayer.forwardmovement.org/calendar/gregory-of-nazianzus, I reflected on the difficulties we face today: pandemic, war, inflation, political strife, disinformation, etc. And then I see what Gregory faced and wonder how much the world has changed.
Gregory was born around 330 CE, only a few years after Constantine legalized Christianity and just five years after the Nicene Creed was originally adopted. It was a time of great strife in the church, with lots of different heresies popping up with influential supporters throughout the Roman world. For a time, Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, was controlled by Arians, believers in a particularly strong heretical movement. Several Roman emperors were Arians, as were thousands of members of the military, the elite, and the common people. In addition, until his death two years after taking the throne, an emperor tried to restore paganism to the empire.
The struggles over the beliefs of the Christian church were often political and violent. Riots and mob attacks were common. Bishops could change at the whim of an emperor or the mob. This was the world Gregory lived in. He was
ordained a priest against his will at the order of his father;
appointed bishop by his best friend to a community he called an "utterly dreadful, pokey little hole” and apparently never visited;
attacked and wounded by an Arian mob during the Easter Vigil; another bishop was killed during the attack;
betrayed by a friend who attempted to replace him and become the official Bishop of Constantinople;
criticized and not recognized as the head of the church in Constantinople by his opponents during the Council there in 381 and felt forced to resign;
returned home to a quiet life of writing and study and died in peace.
Over the course of his life, Gregory struggled with his desire to live alone and study, with the pressure to have a public life as a bishop and leader of the forces supporting traditional Christianity, in particular the doctrine of the Trinity. His five sermons on the doctrine of the Trinity “are marked by clarity, strength, and cheerfulness, and remain to this day one of the most influential expositions of Trinitarian theology.”*
May we persevere in our times as Gregory did in his. As one of the Psalms appointed for this day states:
Trust in the Lord, and do good;
so you will live in the land, and
enjoy security.
Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act.
He will make your vindication
shine like the light,
and the justice of your cause like
the noonday.
The wicked watch for the
righteous,
and seek to kill them.
The Lord will not abandon them
to their power,
or let them be condemned when
they are brought to trial.
Psalms 37:3-6, 32-33
Deacon Leah Sandwell-Weiss
* https://prayer.forwardmovement.org/calendar/gregory-of-nazianzus