Two bodies, one spirit
From a sermon on Saint Basil by Saint Gregory Nazianzen, bishop (330-389)
Two bodies, but a single spirit
Basil and I were both in Athens. We had come, like streams of a river, from the same source in our native land, had separated from each other in pursuit of learning, and were now united again as if by plan, for God so arranged it.
I was not alone at that time in my regard for my friend, the great Basil. I knew his irreproachable conduct, and the maturity and wisdom of his conversation. I sought to persuade others, to whom he was less well known, to have the same regard for him. Many fell immediately under his spell, for they had already heard of him by reputation and hearsay.
What was the outcome? Almost alone of those who had come to Athens to study he was exempted from the customary ceremonies of initiation for he was held in higher honor that his status as a first-year student seemed to warrant.
Such was the prelude to our friendship, the kindling of that flame that was to bind us together. In this way we began to feel affection for each other. When, in the course of time, we acknowledged our friendship and recognized that our ambition was a life of true wisdom, we became everything to each other: we shared the same lodging, the same table, the same desires, the same goal. Our love for each other grew daily warmer and deeper.
The same hope inspired us: the pursuit of learning. This is an ambition especially subject to envy. Yet between us there was no envy. On the contrary, we made capital out of our rivalry. Our rivalry consisted, not in seeking the first place for oneself but in yielding it to the other, for we each looked on the other’s success as his own.
We seemed to be two bodies with a single spirit. Though we cannot believe those who claim that “everything is contained in everything,” yet you must believe that in our case each of us was in the other and with the other.
Our single object and ambition was virtue, and a life of hope in the blessings that are to come; we wanted to withdraw from this world before we departed from it. With this end in view we ordered our lives and all our actions. We followed the guidance of God’s law and spurred each other on to virtue. If it is not too boastful to say, we found in each other a standard and rule for discerning right from wrong.
Different men have different names, which they owe to their parents or to themselves, that is, to their own pursuits and achievements. But our great pursuit, the great name we wanted, was to be Christians, to be called Christians.
Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings
Saint Basil the Great, bishop (329-379)
Saint Basil the Great, (329-379) one of ten children of St. Basil the Elder and St. Emmelia, was born in Caesarea in Asia Minor in 329. He was educated by his father and his grandmother, St. Macrina the Elder. He took advanced studies at Constantinople and Athens, where Gregory Nazianzen and the future Emperor Julian the Apostate were classmates. Basil was well advanced in rhetoric, grammar, philosophy, astronomy, geometry, and medicine. He taught rhetoric at Caesarea, and then turned his attention to the spiritual life. Basil himself tells us how, like a man roused from deep sleep, he turned his eyes to the marvelous truth of the Gospel. He wept many tears over his miserable life, and prayed for guidance from God: “Then I read the Gospel, and saw there that a great means of reaching perfection was the selling of one’s goods, the sharing of them with the poor, the giving up of all care for this life, and the refusal to allow the soul to be turned by any sympathy towards things of earth” (Ep. ccxxiii). To learn the ways of perfection, Basil visited the monasteries of Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia. He was baptized and entered the religious life. In 358, at the age of 29, he became a hermit by the Iris River in Pontus, where he attracted numerous followers and organized the first monastery in Asia Minor.
Basil was ordained a priest in 363 at Caesarea and joined Saint Gregory Nazianzen, his lifelong friend and companion, in combating Arianism. After the death of Eusebius, the Archbishop of Caesarea in 370, Basil was elected archbishop in his place despite objections of the Arian Emperor Valens. Caesarea was then a powerful and wealthy city. Its bishop was Metropolitan of Cappadocia, an Exarch of Pontus which embraced more than half of Asia Minor and comprised eleven provinces. Basil was active in helping the sick and the poor and built a hospice and a huge complex to minister to them. He attracted huge crowds by the eloquence of his preaching. He became the leader of the Orthodox Christians in the East in the continuing struggle against the Arian heresy which threatened to destroy the Church in the East. Basil played a major role in the victory of denouncing Arianism at the Council of Constantinople in 381-82. He fought simony, aided the victims of drought and famine, strove for a better clergy and insisted on rigid clerical discipline. He fearlessly denounced evil wherever he detected it and excommunicated those involved in the widespread prostitution traffic in Cappadocia. He was both a statesman and a man of great personal holiness and one of the great orators of Christianity. Basil became known as the father of Oriental monasticism, the forerunner of St. Benedict. His four doctrinal writings which include “On the Holy Spirit”, and four hundred other letters earned him the title Doctor of the Church and patriarch of Eastern monks. He died on January 1, 379 at age 50.
Saint Gregory Nazianzen (330-389) was born of Christian parents at Nazianzus, Cappadocia in 330 and studied rhetoric at Caesarea, Palestine, and then for ten years at Athens. Gregory joined St. Basil at Pontus on the Iris River to live a solitary life. He was ordained in 362 was named bishop of the Arian territory of Sasima, an area torn by civil strife. He was invited to Constantinople by Basil to help revitalize the Church in the East and combat the heresy of Arianism. There his eloquent preaching at the Church of Anastasia brought floods of converts but also torrents of abuse and persecution from the Arians. He was named archbishop of Constantinople. He later retired to private life and lived in great austerity. He died at Nazianzus on January 25, 389. A Doctor of the Church, Gregory is often surnamed “the Theologian” for his eloquent defense of orthodoxy and the decrees he helped form at the Council of Nicaea, notably his celebrated sermons on the Trinity and his Five Theological Orations delivered at St. Anastasia in Constantinople. Together with St. Basil compiled a selection of writings by Origen.