7 February 2025 (MIA)

Macedonian Orthodox Church Calendar

St. Gregory the Theologian

Born in Nazianzus of a Greek father and a Christian mother, he studied in Athens before his baptism with St. Basil the Great and Julian the Apostate. St. Basil consecrated him bishop of Sasima, and the Emperor Theodosius quickly called him to the vacant archiepiscopal throne of Constantinople. His works were manifold, the best known being his theological writings, for which he received the title `the Theologian’. He is particularly famed for the depth of his Sermons on the Holy Trinity. He also wrote against the heretic Macedonius, who taught wrongly of the Holy Spirit (that the Spirit was a creature of God), and against Apollinarius who taught that Christ did not have a human soul but that His divinity was in place of His soul. He also wrote against the Emperor Julian the Apostate, his sometime schoolfellow. In the year 381, when a quarrel broke out in the Council concerning his election as archbishop, he withdrew himself, left Constantinople and went to Nazianzus, remaining there in retirement, prayer and the writing of instructive books until his death in the year 389.

Catholic Calendar

Blessed Nivard of Vaucelles

Born c. 1000; died after 1150. Nivard is the product of the very holy family of St. Bernard. When he decided to become a monk in a new and strict community of Benedictine monks called the “Cistercians,” he brought 31 other men whom he had talked into becoming monks with him. Among the 31 were four of his brothers, including the youngest brother Nivard and an uncle. Nivard also followed Bernard to Clairvaux and eventually was appointed novice-master at Vaucelles.