St. Gregory Nazianzen

St. Gregory Nazianzen was born in 329 at Arianzus, near the town of Nazianzus in Cappadocia (modern Turkey), the son of the local bishop, Gregory the Elder, and of St. Nonna. He received the finest education of his age, studying in Caesarea, Alexandria, and finally Athens, where he formed a famous friendship with St. Basil the Great. Together with Basil and Basil's brother Gregory of Nyssa, he is counted among the Cappadocian Fathers, the theologians who shaped the Church's confession of the Trinity. Drawn to contemplation, Gregory joined Basil for a time in monastic retreat in Pontus, where the two compiled the Philocalia, an anthology of Origen's writings. His life thereafter was a tension between the solitude he loved and the ministry pressed upon him: ordained a priest almost against his will by his father, and later consecrated bishop of the obscure town of Sasima by Basil, he shrank from office even as the Church repeatedly called him to its defense. His greatest hour came in 379, when the small Nicene community of Constantinople, long dominated by Arianism, summoned him to the capital. In the little chapel of the Anastasis ('Resurrection') he preached the Five Theological Orations, masterworks on the Trinity and the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit that earned him the singular title 'the Theologian.' He was made archbishop of Constantinople and briefly presided over the First Council of Constantinople in 381, but when his election was contested he resigned for the sake of peace, telling the bishops that, like Jonah, he was willing to be thrown overboard to calm the storm. Gregory retired to Nazianzus and then to his family estate, devoting his final years to prayer and to poetry; his verse, including a rare autobiographical poem, makes him one of the finest poets of Christian antiquity, and he is honored as a patron of poets. He died in 390. Venerated from earliest times and named a Doctor of the Church, he is celebrated in the Roman Rite on January 2 together with his friend St. Basil. His relics, long kept in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, were in large part returned by Pope St. John Paul II in 2004 to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and now rest in the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George in Istanbul, a sign of communion between East and West.