Hope in Bereavement - What we can learn from Gregory of Nyssa
This past Tuesday was the feast day of St. Gregory of Nyssa, that great Cappadocian father (died c. A.D. 395). There is much that could be said of this luminary of the early Church. We might speak of his excellent early education and training in rhetoric; we might speak of his difficult episcopacy, which he reluctantly took, later to be exiled under trumped up charges of embezzlement by his Arian foes; we could speak of his vindication and return; we could speak of his biblical exegesis and preaching, his mystical and ascetical writing, his ardent defense of the Nicene faith against his Arian foes; we could speak of contributions to our understanding of the triune God, and especially, the person and working of the Holy Spirit; we could speak of all these things, but in doing so, I fear we may fail to see something very important about the man behind the doctor of the faith, something very ordinary, prosaic and indeed common to our human condition. In perusing Father Stephen Reynold’s w...