Author: Student Gică Emilian-Florentin (Theological Orthodox Seminary of Bucharest)
Keywords: Saint Gregory the Theologian, Patron-Saint, life, works
Abstract:
This Sermon presents in a concise manner some information related to the life and works of Saint Hierarch Gregory the Theologian. By means of his sermons and discourses became one of the crowns that succeeded in forming a serious foundation for the treasure of Church faith. The time and place allowed me to limit only to some important dogmatic teachings related to Holy Trinity, and to some others, preached occasionally, within the frame of some Feasts or special events in the life of the Church. Saint Gregory may be considered the founder of the Christian poetry and of the literary genre called necrologue, or the funeral oration. He was a fighter against Arius and Macedonius. He is one of the most important Fathers of the 4th century Christianity; he is evoked especially along with Saint Basil the Great and Saint John Chrysostom for their fundamental contribution to the life of Christians, that authored together most of the classical dogmatic and homiletic heritage of the Church. As no one before, they managed to attract large crowds of Christians who benefited hugely from their sermons and writings. Saint Gregory received the title “The Theologian”, for his profound contribution to the defining of the Church teaching regarding the Holy Trinity. In the first part, the sermon expounds the importance of sainthood in our Church, after which it tries to relate the particular profile of the sanctity of Saint Gregory in the larger context of sainthood in general. The portrait we have tried to sketch does not pretend to be a complete one, relying in exchange to some conventional traits more or less objective. We can say that each saint is a unique example of living in sanctity. Also, every saint can inspire in different manners the one who manage to know him directly of read his writings. In what follows, we have displayed the stages of the intellectual development of our Saint and his friendship with Saint Basil the Great and, finally, we have mentioned some of his writings, and their general characteristics.
Pages: 56-62