St. Basil the Great (January 2nd)

Of the various Saints and Feast Days that we remember during this week:

December 29 - SOLEMNITY OF THE HOLY FAMILY OF JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH

December 29 - Saint Thomas Becket, Bishop and Martyr

December 31 - Saint Sylvester I, Pope

January 1 - SOLEMNITY OF MARY, THE HOLY MOTHER OF GOD

January 2 - Saints Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen, Bishops and Doctors of the Church

January 3 - The Most Holy Name of Jesus

January 4 - Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, Religious (USA)

January 5 - Saint John Neumann, Bishop (USA)


I’ve chosen to write about St. Basil the Great:


As his title “The Great” suggests, even in his lifetime St. Basil was an incredibly important figure in the Eastern (Orthodox) Church.  


Born around 330 AD, to a fairly wealthy Greek speaking family in Cappadocia (today in Turkey), along with his brother Gregory of Nyssa and his friend Gregory of Nazianzus, are collectively referred to as the Cappadocian Fathers.


The three were born into the time just after the legalization of Christianity by Constantine, which produced its own challenges:


  1. Doctrinal controversies, notably with Arianism over the exact nature of Christ (was he divine or just a little less than divine), which during times of persecution couldn’t really be hashed-out, came out into the open.

  2. Liturgical practices, previously under persecution, were necessarily somewhat improvised, with freedom came the opportunity to standardize liturgical practice, and finally

  3. Religious commitment, under persecution, had been actually “rather easy,” people who proved willing to suffer for their faith were clearly committed to their faith.  With freedom, religious commitment proved harder to identify, or for that matter to emulate: If you wanted to be a “good Christian” what did that actually mean when you were finally free to do what you wanted?


 St. Basil the Great was involved in all of these questions: 

  1. He attended the Council of Constantinople (360) which turned out to be an intermediary council and took place between the two Ecumenical Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) which ultimately produced the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.

  2. He along with St. John Chrysostom served  the Eastern Orthodox equivalent to Pope St. Gregory the Great (and predated St. Gregory the great by more than 2 centuries) in, along with St. John Chrysostrom, systematizing the liturgy.

  3. Having spent some time in Alexandria Egypt, the birthplace of some of the Desert Hermits including St. Anthony of the Desert, St. Basil again systematized this experience, earning the title of being the father of Eastern Christian monastic life, again, both predating and influencing St. Benedict who became the father of Western Christian (Catholic) monastic life.


Recently, I was able to take part in a pilgrimage which visited a fair number of the once Christian sites in modern Turkey, including the Churches and hermitages (carved into rock / out of caves) of Göreme in Cappadocia.  


The influence of St. Basil the Great in those sacred spaces is obvious and awe inspiring.  


There is of course an enormous sadness in those Churches of Göreme – the structures are beautiful, but the people are gone (or deeply “underground,” which has its own painfully poignant significance because in the early centuries during Roman persecution, a fair amount of the Christian populace in Cappadocia lived large periods of time in entire villages carved out of the volcanic (pumice laden) rock.


Since the 1922-23 mutually agreed-upon “population transfers” between Greece and Turkey, all Greeks are now officially gone from the mainland of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and all Muslim Turks are gone from Greece as well as from all the Islands of the Aegean Sea.  


Proponents of the decision to conduct this mutual “population transfer” say that it saved countless lives.  Still, the psychic scars of leaving this beautiful history behind are again obvious.


St. Basil (the Great), pray for us. 

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