02/01/2025

Yesterday I got into a bit of a mess as I tried to reflect on Mary's part in God's Loving Kindness. So did the Early Church.

Today's Saints, Basil and Gregory lived in a time after Constantine's acceptance of Christianity that was the battleground where the dogmas and structures that have become Theology were first tackled by human reason.

Our Faith is based on the interventions and revelations made by God that are recorded in the Scriptures. Our acceptance and understanding of them is a matter for the human rationality which is part of our "image and likeness".

Neither of today's saints were ambitious for personal renown. Both wanted to live a life of prayer as monks and grow in the Love of God. 

They could not, however, ignore the way in which so many Bishops of their day had "lost the plot" and wanted to deny that Jesus was "True man and True God" as defined by the Council at Nicaea called by Constantine largely to counter the Arian controversy that broke the unity of Eastern Orthodoxy many years before the Protestant Reformation did the same for the Roman Church.

Jesus' foundation on St Peter has always faced conflict from without and within. St Paul argued fiercely with St Peter and with Judaizers. Jesus himself was the first victim of persecution resulting from religion instigating the state to take action against its opponents.

One of the strange facts of history is that Constantine's nephew Julian who is remembered by  the soubriquet, "the Apostate" given to him by St Basil's brother, another St Gregory but this time of Nyasa, studied at the same time in the same Athenian "schools"  as did today's saints. 

The trio Basil, Gregory and Julian were personally acquainted . The Saints received the same education and conditioning as did the "paganizer" and persecutor of Christianity but with diametrically opposed results.

Dear Lord, you know that I am interested in Church History as a human who wants to understand his heritage. I hope that I am sincere in the beliefs as formulated at Nicaea. I also pray that my heart is sincerely seeking for the meaning of the many words that have survived from the past and that "true God from true God, true man from true man, begotten not made, of One Being with the Father" are not only words to be remembered but are the Truth that has been revealed through the Scriptures from the time of Abraham until your Ascension into the timeless eternal Beginning which you are with the Father and Holy Spirit in the Glory that we can only adore in silent wonder and pray that we can become acceptable to you as we seek pardon for our trespasses and show by our deeds that we have only loving forgiveness for those who trespass against us. Maranatha, Lord. May Our Lord Jesus soon return. Amen.