Saints Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen

Today two friends are remembered together, and rightly so, because they spent their lives together. Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen met as students in Caesarea in Cappadocia, and from then on they never lost sight of each other. Gregory was born in Arianzus, near Nazianzus, around 329, into a family where faith had come in through the women: his father belonged to a sect that worshipped the Most High, and it was his wife, Nonna, who converted him — so much so that he later became a bishop. Gregory studied in Caesarea, in Alexandria and finally in Athens, where one of his classmates was a young man who would become the emperor Julian, the one history calls the Apostate. He joined Basil in the monastery of Annesi, in Pontus, but he didn’t stay: he wanted an even more secluded life. And here is what makes him human. In 361 his father ordained him a priest practically by force. Gregory first ran away, then accepted, and as an old man, in his autobiography, he wrote a single sentence about that day: “He bent me by force.” Years later his friend Basil named him bishop of Sasima, a see Gregory never reached — he found the road blocked by another bishop and, realizing that to get in he would have had to do it weapons in hand, he turned back. He ended up in Constantinople, in 379, leading the small community that had remained faithful. Today he is a Doctor and Father of the Church, and they call him Gregory the Theologian. If your name is Basil or Gregory, today is your name day. They’re two names you don’t hear much, and maybe that’s why those who have them wear them with a bit of pride. Of these two, tradition has kept one thing above all: that they were friends. Amid councils, exiles and theological disputes, the friendship is what remained. That’s no small thing.