Sarx

In the continuing series from Worship at St. Gregory’s, by Rick Fabian.

Our chosen patron saint, Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa (hence called Gregory Nyssen) died about the year 395. His church lay in the Roman province of Cappadocia, today’s central Turkey. Born to a prominent Kurdish Christian family, he enjoyed a layman’s quiet career teaching logic, until his firebrand brother Basil pressed him to join the bishops battling for Nicene orthodoxy in the councils of his time. Basil appointed him suffragan at Nyssa, a crossroads village sinecure. To the surprize of many, on Basil’s early death Gregory became a conciliar leader. One of the most original thinkers in Christian history, and widely esteemed during his lifetime, Gregory was a Greek-speaking humanist, a universalist, a mystic, and a married bishop. These traits later led medieval schoolmen to overlook him, though his influence endured. (Our parish, founded in 1978, is one of very few dedicated to his memory, and was the first of any denomination so dedicated in this country.) But today Gregory Nyssen draws fresh interest, and his work appears increasingly in English. His last book, the Life of Moses, ends with advice we have emblazoned on the lantern above the altar in his church: