Saint Basil the Great & Saint Gregory Nazianzen

In celebrating the feasts of Saint Basil and Saint Gregory Nazianen on the same day, the Church extols a virtue which she has always esteemed, friendship. The friendship between Basil and Gregory was admirable. Born in Cappadocia around 330, they studied together in Athens and then returned to their homeland wehre they led a monastic life for several years. Their temperaments were very different. While Basil had qualities of a leader and a gift for organization that made him a legislator for monks in hte East, Gregory was a contemplative and a poet.

Although both were called to the episcopate, they did not succeed equally well in their charges. In Caessarea, his native city, Basil as an intrepid pastor. By word, in his writtings, and through many interventions, he defended the independence of the Church in the face of temporal power and recalled the dignity of the poor, who were too often ridiculed by the rich. Before all else, he safeguarded faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God. As for Gregory, after he became bishop of a small town, he found himself promoted to the see of Constantinople, then in the throes of the Arian crisis (379). People deligted in his sermons and discourses, and saw in him the father of the poor, but as he was excessively impressionable, he could not cope with factions. In less than a yar and a half he returned to his studious retreat at Nazianzen. He was called, "the Theologian," a man who could speak of God, while Basil received from his contemporaries the title of "the Great". The Orthodox Church has placed Gregory and Basil with John Chrysostom in the first rank of ecumenical doctors. They are the "three Hierarchs". - Magnificat