Wisdom 7:7-14 &John 8:25-32

Feast of St. Gregory of Nazianzus

When I read and reflect upon our SSJE Rule, I am still often caught off guard at how core theological tenets of Christian faith are so vividly applied to the pressing realities of everyday human existence. For example, I return again and again to these words in our chapter on “The Witness of Life in Community”:

Our human vocation to live in communion and mutuality is rooted in our creation in God’s image and likeness. The very being of God is community; the Father, Son, and Spirit are One in reciprocal self-giving and love. The mystery of God as Trinity is one that only those living in personal communion can understand by experience. Through our common life we can begin to grasp that there is a transcendent unity that allows mutual affirmation of our distinctness as persons. Through prayer, we can see that this flows from the Triune life of God.[1]

This indeed has been my experience of life in monastic community, which has by far been my most powerful teacher in regard to the mystery of the Trinity. Before coming to life in this community, I struggled long and hard to appropriate this mystery of the faith as anything approaching a personal reality. Of course, this is what theology does at its best. The sublime and the mundane are brought into genuine conversation in such a way that human hearts are kindled, human desires are transfigured, and even human suffering becomes the royal road to larger Life. Rather than static words on the pages of books, however fascinating, theology begins to dance: it weaves a pattern of vibrant and dynamic movement into the shuffling steps of our pilgrimage even as it plants our feet firmly on stable ground that can bear our weight.

Gregory of Nazianzus, whom we remember today, is not a household name in the Western Church. But his mature and powerful theological reflections on the nature of God as Trinity have hada deep and formative impact on the course of church history. In the Eastern Church, Gregory is not remembered primarily as one member of a trio, the Cappadocian Fathers: Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa, all born in the same region of Turkey around 330 and responsible in a creative, collaborative and collegial way for developing a profound and coherent Trinitarian theology. The relationships between these men were not always as easy as hagiography would lead us to believe. They bickered and competed, were capable of clinging narrowly to their own opinions, and even broke one another’s hearts. Now, I am not a scholar of patristics. My primary love of the Triune God has come to me by way of the costly grace of personal communion and the stretching and transfiguring tensions of our common life in the Church. But in that light, I can tell you why the witness of Gregory of Nazianzus is relevant to me.I cannot continue in the word of Christ into that knowledge of the truth that I know will set me free without the grace of the Triune God.And I cannot hope to glimpse the creating, saving, and unifying interrelationship within the Trinity without the unrelenting synergy of shared discipleship, by which I am who I am and through which I am yet becoming who God intends me to be. Just as God is not a self-sufficient monad, neither can I do this alone. And, I’d say, neither can you.

Gregory of Nazianzus couldn’t have walked his own, unreproducible path of discipleship without his closest friend, Basil, and Basil’s brother, Gregory of Nyssa. It was that synergy of discipleship mirroring the self-spending love of the Trinity, as it unfolded around and between Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil that I want to reflect upon.

First, what does church history on a grand scale tell us about these two? Gregory and Basil are credited with heroic and singular contributions in defending the faith enshrined in the Nicene Creed from lesser, heretical viewpoints. What is heresy? In some cases, the thinkers, writers and leaders whom[...]