A Reflection for the Feast of S. Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Church
Sabbato infra Hebdomadam IV post Octavam Paschæ — III. classis
The Church, in her ancient wisdom, has clothed this Saturday with a double brightness. We stand still within the long white robe of Eastertide, the Risen Lord yet walking among His own; and upon this Paschal radiance she lays the festal vesture of one of her greatest theologians, S. Gregory of Nazianzus — called by the East simply ὁ Θεολόγος, The Theologian. To him she assigns those readings ever appointed for her Doctors: the praise of the wise scribe in Ecclesiasticus, and the words of Our Lord upon the salt and the light.
It is fitting that we pause to consider why, on the feast of so luminous a Father, the Church should place these particular Scriptures upon our lips and before our eyes.
I. Sapientiam omnium antiquorum exquiret — The Scribe of the Lord
Ecclesiasticus says of the wise man:
He will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients, and will be occupied in the prophets. He will keep the sayings of renowned men, and will enter withal into the subtleties of parables. He will search out the hidden meanings of proverbs, and will be conversant in the secrets of parables… If the great Lord will, He shall fill him with the spirit of understanding: and he shall pour forth the words of his wisdom as showers, and in his prayer he shall confess to the Lord. (Ecclus. xxxix. 1, 3, 8–9, Douay-Rheims)
Mark well the order of the Holy Ghost in this passage. The wise man first seeks, then keeps, then enters the depths of what he has received; and only after long discipline does the Lord pour into him the spirit of understanding. Wisdom is not a sudden possession but a patrimony received with reverence and rendered fruitful by prayer.
S. Jerome, the great translator who himself bent his life over the Sacred Page, wrote that “ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” (Comm. in Isaiam, Prol.). The scribe whom Ecclesiasticus praises is not a man inflated by curiosity, but one bowed beneath what S. Augustine called the auctoritas Scripturae, an authority “set above all the writings of subsequent bishops” (Epist. lxxxii ad Hieronymum). The Doctor of the Church is precisely such a scribe — one who receives Tradition as a man receives an inheritance, not as a man invents an opinion.
This portrait is fulfilled in Gregory. Born of holy parents, formed in the schools of Caesarea, Alexandria, and Athens — where he forged with S. Basil that friendship which the latter called “one soul in two bodies” — Gregory drank long at the wells of the ancients before ever he opened his mouth to teach. When at last the storms of Arianism broke over the Church and he was summoned to preach in the imperial city of Constantinople, he did so from a small chapel called Anastasia — the Resurrection — and from that humble pulpit he restored the Nicene faith to a city that had nearly forgotten it.
His Five Theological Orations stand to this day as one of the surest expositions of the mystery of the Holy Trinity ever composed by a human pen. And what does he say of his own labour? That no man ought to discourse of God who has not first been purified, “or at least is being purified” (Or. xxvii). The wisdom of which Ecclesiasticus sings is not the property of the proud.
II. Vos estis sal terræ — Salt That Has Not Lost Its Savour
Then comes the Gospel:
You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men. You are the light of the world… So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. (Matt. v. 13–16)
The Fathers found in this passage the very vocation of the apostle, the bishop, and the doctor.
S. John Chrysostom, with his accustomed force, observes that Our Lord does not say you shall be, but you are — the dignity is given before any deed is done, that the labour might rise to meet the gift (In Matthæum, Hom. xv). And he draws out a stern consequence: if the salt itself become tasteless, what shall season the salt? When the doctor of souls grows worldly, the wound is doubled, for the very remedy has corrupted.
S. Hilary of Poitiers, that Western mirror of the Eastern theologians, writes that the apostles are called salt because, by the doctrine they preach, they preserve the bodies and souls of men from the corruption of sin and error (Comm. in Matt. iv). Salt is at once savour and incorruption — and so must doctrine be, both sweet to the taste of the faithful and a barrier against decay.
S. Augustine, treating these very verses in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, urges the preacher not to fear losing the praise of men, for “if you fear to suffer reproach, you have lost your savour” (De Sermone Domini in Monte I. vi). The salt that minds the palate of the world is no longer salt at all.
And what is light, if not the Truth shining without compromise? Our Lord adds at once: Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled (Matt. v. 17–18). The Doctor is light precisely because he transmits, whole and entire, what he has received — not one iota, not one apex discarded.
This is a word the present age must hear with trembling. Whatsoever shall break one of these least commandments, and shall so teach men, “shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven” (v. 19). Doctrine is not ours to dilute. It is the deposit; we are the stewards.
III. The Theologian as Salt and Light
In Gregory we behold these two passages woven into one life.
He was salt — for in an age when the Arian heresy had so seasoned the Empire that, as S. Jerome lamented, “the whole world groaned and marvelled to find itself Arian” (Dial. contra Luciferianos 19), Gregory preserved the savour of the Catholic confession. His preaching at the Anastasia, the Council of Constantinople (A.D. 381), and the Tomus he helped to frame were among the human instruments by which the Holy Ghost preserved the faith of Nicaea against decay.
He was light — for he taught with such clarity upon the homoousion, upon the eternal generation of the Son, upon the divinity and procession of the Holy Ghost, that S. John Damascene, more than three centuries later, would build whole tracts of his De Fide Orthodoxa upon Gregory’s words. So abundantly did Gregory pour forth, as Ecclesiasticus says, the words of his wisdom as showers, that the Church drank of him for centuries and drinks still.
And he was a scribe of the ancients — for his every page is bright with Scripture, and his theology is no innovation but the faith of the Apostles, defended in the language his own age required. He understood, as the Council of Trent would later define, that the Gospel is “the source of all saving truth and rule of conduct,” contained in the written books and the unwritten traditions, “received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself, or from the Apostles themselves, the Holy Ghost dictating” (Conc. Trid., Sess. IV).
IV. The Lesson for Our Souls
What, then, do these readings ask of us, who are not Doctors but disciples?
First, that we honour and seek out the wisdom of the ancients. The world will tell us that yesterday is dead and only the present matters. The Holy Ghost in Ecclesiasticus tells us the contrary: the wise man seeks out the wisdom of all the ancients. Read the Fathers. Read the Doctors. Read S. Gregory himself — his Orations are not locked in a museum, but living waters still.
Second, that we cherish the integrity of doctrine. Our Lord did not come to abolish but to fulfil; and the Church, His Spouse, has neither power nor permission to abolish what He fulfilled. We must love the faith whole, not by selection. To prefer one’s own taste to the deposit is to begin losing one’s savour.
Third, that we let our light so shine — not to be seen, but that men may glorify the Father. The salt does not draw attention to itself; it serves the dish. The lamp does not adore its own flame; it lights the house. So must our works of faith be: visible enough to give glory to God, hidden enough to take no glory for ourselves.
Fourth, that we pray. Gregory taught that purity of life is the indispensable condition of true theology. In his prayer he shall confess to the Lord, says Ecclesiasticus. Without prayer, study puffs up; with prayer, study sanctifies.
A Closing Counsel
Take up this day, in honour of the Theologian, some short portion of his writing — perhaps the opening of his First Theological Oration, where he tells us who may rightly speak of God, and when, and to whom. Pray a Gloria Patri slowly, mindful that you are confessing the very mystery for which Gregory bore exile and contradiction. And ask the intercession of the Saint:
S. Gregori Nazianzene, lumen Ecclesiæ, sermone tuo nos illumina, oratione tua nos custodi, ut salem sapientiæ christianæ servantes, in luce fidei usque in finem ambulemus. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
If you wish to follow this thread further, the Theology and Doctrine learning path will lead you step by step through the Trinitarian theology that S. Gregory laboured so dearly to defend; while the Church History path will set him in his proper context among the great Cappadocian Fathers and the Council of Constantinople. Either is a fitting road for a soul desiring to be both salt and light in our own day.