Today January 2

Today is the (new) feast of St. Basil the Great (330 - 379). He was a good student, both in Constantinople and in Athens the two most scholarly cities of his time. He couldn't have had much fun in college, for, as his biographer (who was also a saint), said: "he knew only two streets, those leading to the church and to the schools." He had somewhat of a retiring nature, though he was a brilliant teacher and rhetorician, he became a monk in Pontus in what is now Turkey and lived just beyond the river Iris from Annesi, where his saintly mother and sister lived in a religious community. Others soon joined him and he wrote a rule so famous and followed, he belongs as an Eastern counterpart to St. Benedict himself.

Basil had two friends. One, Gregory of Nazianz, whom he kept all his life. If anything, he grew in affection for him til they were "one soul with two bodies." The other was Eustathius, whom he loved at first, but with whom the friendship dissolved in a veritable firestorm of accusation and acrimony years later.

In his time St. Basil was the only orthodox bishop in the East, which he maintained through sheer force of will, "combined with the courage to withstand the Emperor when needful and to ignore him when practicable. This was a period when, throughout the world, the orthodox [rather than Arian] bishops who remained in charge of churches could be counted on one's fingers, and probably on the fingers of one hand." - Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 2.

Basil is a complex man, cultured and polished, but also proud and pragmatic, "a real man of flesh and blood, not just a plaster saint." - Faith of the Early Fathers, ibid. He was a victim of jealousy on the part of Eusebius, archbishop of Caesarea, but he handled the situation with tact. And he, proud though he was, actually tied on an apron and served in the soup kitchen he himself established. But in matters of faith and morals he was unshakable. "Nothing short of violence can avail against such a man" said the prefect Modestus in a report to the Emperor Valens. He said Mass every day, preached incessantly and sang psalms before each dawn. When he himself became bishop he visited every parish, even in remote villages and despite his chronic ill-health. He was greatly misunderstood even by the orthodox faithful, and accused of ambition and of heresy. Even Rome was reluctant to help him. "For my sins I seem to be unsuccessful in everything!" he wrote when plunged in depression.

He died on Jan. 1, 379, worn out with hard work and from a painful illness. His funeral was attended and he was mourned by pagans, Jews and strangers as well as by many Christian friends. "The great Basil," he was declared at the council of Chalcedon, "who has expounded truth to the whole earth." A fine epitaph, that. St. Basil, pray for us.