Saint Gregory of Nyssa

Saint Gregory of Nyssa was a bishop, theologian, and master of the spiritual life, the younger brother of Saint Basil the Great. Together with him and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus he is one of the three great Cappadocian Fathers, who defended faith in the Holy Trinity in the fourth century. The Church commemorates him on January 10.

He was born around 335 in Asia Minor, in present-day Turkey, into a family that produced several saints. His brothers and sisters also included Saint Macrina and Saint Peter, later bishop of Sebaste. Gregory’s Christian upbringing was seen to above all by Basil, whom he called his father and teacher, and by Macrina. He received a thorough education and especially valued philosophy and rhetoric.

At first he chose a secular path: he taught rhetoric and married. In time, following the example of his brother and sister, he devoted himself to the ascetic life. In the early 370s Basil, then bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, ordained him bishop of the small town of Nyssa. Gregory accepted the office reluctantly, yet he proved to be a zealous shepherd and won the respect of the faithful.

These were the years of the reign of Emperor Valens, who favored the Arians. His opponents accused Gregory of mismanaging the goods of the Church, and in 376 a synod of Arian bishops deprived him of his office. He had to leave his city and returned to it only after the death of Valens in 378, welcomed with joy. The Roman Martyrology recalls that he was driven out for confessing the true faith.

In 379 Basil died, and soon after him Macrina. Gregory took up his brother’s spiritual legacy and became one of the chief defenders of the Nicene faith. He took part in synods, sought to settle disputes between Churches, and at the Council of Constantinople in 381, which defined the teaching on the divinity of the Holy Spirit, he was among the leading figures. Emperor Theodosius entrusted difficult tasks to him.

In his writings he defended the divinity of the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, for instance in his work Against Eunomius, and in the Great Catechetical Discourse he gave catechists an ordered exposition of the faith. He explained the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes, and wrote about the creation of man in the image of God. In The Life of Moses he presented the journey up Mount Sinai as an image of man’s ascent toward God. He taught that this journey never ends, because God keeps enlarging the soul’s capacity to receive ever greater good. He recalled that Christ himself is present in the poor. He also wrote an account of the life and death of his sister Macrina. Benedict XVI called him a great father of mysticism.

The sources mention him for the last time in 394, when he took part in a synod in Constantinople. The date of his death is unknown. Gregory has been venerated as a saint since antiquity, in the East and in the West, without a formal canonization, which did not yet exist in those centuries. The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 called him the Father of Fathers.