Jan 2, 2025 - Feast of St Basil and St Gregory Nazianzus

Although we have magnificent readings today from the Letter of John and the Gospel of John, I wanted to share a few thoughts about todays’ saints – St Basil of Caesarea and St Gregory Nazianzen.

In the Christmas Season, the Church celebrates several splendid saints: St Stephen, St John the Evangelist, the Holy Innocents… and of course Our Lady, Mother of God. But it sometimes seems that St Basil the Great and St Gregory Nazianzen get the short end of the stick.

Certainly, if we were in an Eastern Catholic church, these two men would be celebrated with great fanfare. Both of them were successful orators who became monks and then bishops in an area called Cappadocia (now in Modern Day Turkey). We honor them as doctors of the church, who bravely defended doctrines that we take for granted today: the Holy Most Trinity and the Divinity of Christ. Indeed, the ‘Nicene Creed’ that we recite each Sunday is actually the ‘Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed’, named after the Council of Constantinople in 381, which St Gregory Nazianzen played an important part. So when we recite that creed, we have St Gregory to thank.

But I’ll admit that my favorite is St Basil the Great. If you have time today, I’d recommend you google the ‘funeral oration on St Basil the Great’, which was delivered by his good friend, St Gregory Nazienzen. It’s a moving, albeit lengthy, eulogy of one saintly man to another. St Basil has the impressive pedigree of being the son of a saint – Saint Emmelia or St Emily – a woman who raised 10 children, 5 of whom were canonized as saints.

St Basil is the best known among his saint siblings, and he receives credit for founding perhaps the first monastic rule of life and also founding almost certainly the world’s first hospital. In the ancient world, the poor basically had no options when they became sick… until St Basil and later followers made hospitals for them. Quite to the contrary popular opinion, which sees the Catholic Church as antithetical to good medicine and science, St Basil is a clear example is a reminder of the very positive role that the Catholic Church has played in healthcare and science over the ages. As a medical student, I helped to start a Catholic med student group named after St Basil.

Basil often exhorted his audience to share with the poor- because our earthly possessions are not our own.

[Quote - We should] ‘regard the use of money as a matter of stewardship, not of selfish enjoyment…. What answer shall you make to the judge, you who dress walls, but will not clothe a man; who spruce up horses, and overlook an unfashionable brother”

These are words that would incriminate many of us: how many of us spend more on caring for pets or for home improvements than we spend on the poor in our midst? St Basil shows the very early roots of the Catholic social teachings of the Universal Destination of Goods and the Preferential Option for the Poor.

My favorite quote from St Basil is this:

“The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat, which you guard in your locked storage-chests, belongs to the naked; …The silver that you keep hidden in a safe place belongs to the one in need."

Perhaps with the New Year, we could take the words of St Basil to heart, and look to see whether the extra coat or clothes we have stored in our closets could instead go to a donation bin, such as the St Vincent de Paul bin we have down in the parking lot.

The final anecdote from St Basil that I wanted to share is from his encounter with the Emperor’s head prefect, who was sent with soldiers to force him to give up his orthodox views.

When he was threatened with impoverishment, exile, torture, and death, Basil retorted that none of these frightened him – since he had minimal belongings, he viewed the whole world as his home so exile was pointless, and he longed for Heaven and welcomed execution.

Amazed, the prefect responded: ‘no one has ever spoken to me like this before.’ Basil retorted: "Perhaps, you have never met a bishop before." 

I think St Basil is a great saint to pray to, for courage to stand up for the truth, even when it seems uncomfortable.

After Mass, I invite you if you have a moment to venerate a first class relic that has been loaned to the church today, of St Basil the Great.

May his example inspire us, and his intercession strengthen us, to stand up for the truth, and to remember the poor in our midst.

Amen.