Born of remarkable parents in Caesarea, St. Gregory was consecrated to God before his birth in 329 A,D. by his mother, St. Nonna. He was subsequently educated in Alexandria and Athens, where he was an intimate friend and fellow student of St. Basil the Great, who inspired in him a love for the monastic life. In 361 his father, the Bishop of Nazianzus, ordained him to the priesthood and, upon his father’s death in 374, he succeeded him as Bishop of that city.

    At this time the Arians flourished throughout the Eastern Empire and there were fewer and fewer Orthodox Christians. But under St. Gregory, who was called to Constantinople in 379 by the Spanish Orthodox Emperor of the East, Theodosius, Orthodoxy began to revive and gain ascendency over the errors of Arianism.

    A man of powerful eloquence, both in the spoken and the written word, St. Gregory resigned the See of Constantinople after only a short time and retired, at first to Nazanzius, and then to Arianzus, where he lived an ascetic life of great prayer (it is said that he wore his knees out with kneeling), proclaimed to all that just “as fish cannot swim without water, and a bird cannot fly without air, so a Christian cannot advance a single step without Christ.” He continued to defend Orthodoxy with the sword of the pen until his holy death in the year 390.

    Among his many works are orations on the subject of the Trinity, given in Constantinople, which won for him such acclaim that the Council of Ephesus later accorded him the rare title of “Theologian” (given only to two others in the history of the Church –the Apostle St. John, and St. Symeon the New Theologian). 

His orations and writings are noted for the depth of their theological insight and a certain poetic soaring above the things of earth, as in this passage from his “Second Theological Oration”: 

    “Who spread the sky around us, and set the stars in order? Or rather, first, can you tell me, of your own knowledge of the things in heaven, what are the sky and the stars; you who know not what lies at your feet, and cannot even take the measure of yourself about what is above your nature, and gape at the illimitable? For, granted that you understand orbits and periods, and waxings and wanings, and settings and risings, and some degrees and minutes, and all the other things which make you so proud of your wonderful knowledge; you have not arrived at comprehension of the realities themselves, but only at an observation of some movement, which, when confirmed by longer practice, and drawing the observations of many individuals into one generalization, and thence deducing a law, has acquired the name of Science.”