Letter & Spirit, Vol. 7: The Bible and the Church Fathers: The Liturgical Context of Patristic Exegesis (Letter and Spirit) by Scott Hahn

Author:Scott Hahn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Religious Studies, Catholicism, Theology, Religious Studies & Reference, Religion & Spirituality, Christian Books & Bibles, General Fiction
Publisher: Emmaus Road Publishing
Published: 2012-07-02T06:00:00+00:00

SCRIPTURE, WORSHIP, AND LITURGY IN THE THOUGHT OF ST. BASIL THE GREAT

Stephen M. Hildebrand

Franciscan University of Steubenville

The theme of worship permeates the life and writings of St. Basil, from his first conversion to the ascetic life to the sermons on creation that he wrote just before his death. 1 The source of Basil’s thinking about worship and liturgy is Sacred Scripture. Scripture forms the inspirational center of his theology and, indeed, of his whole life. In the course of his life, Basil’s understanding of worship shifted in two crucial ways: first, he realized the centrality of the Bible in the act of worshipping God; and, secondly, he recognized the centrality of the liturgy in rightly understanding the Bible.

Basil’s Early Life and Conversion

Although Basil had come from a Christian family distinguished for its piety—his paternal grandparents, for example, were confessors in the Diocletian persecution 2 —Basil had set a course for himself to become a rhetor. To this end he studied in Caesarea and then Athens. There is no reason to think that Basil lived a debauched life, and yet, by his own account, his pursuit of a career in rhetoric ran counter to his true calling. In retrospect, he saw his earlier life as vain, futile, and foolish: he had been in a deep sleep. 3 Gregory of Nyssa remarks that when his brother Basil returned from school, “he was monstrously conceited about his skill in rhetoric, contemptuous of every high reputation and exalted beyond the leading lights of the province by his self-importance.” 4

What woke St. Basil up? Anna Silvas presents a very compelling account of the story of Basil’s awakening and the persons who lay behind it. In the first place is his sister, St. Macrina, and his brother Naucratius. Macrina had been engaged to be married late in the 330s when her fiancé died. Upon his death Macrina invoked her right not to marry again and determined to be a consecrated widow and, in her case, a consecrated virgin. Gregory of Nyssa presents Macrina as the religious center of the family, in whose midst she continued to live as a leaven. It was at Macrina’s urging, for example, that her mother took up “the philosophical, immaterial way of life,” for Macrina “led her to her own standard of humility, prepared her to put herself on an equal footing with the community of maidens, so as to share on equal terms with them one table, bed and all the needs of life, with every difference of rank eliminated from their lives.” 5

Gregory of Nyssa tells us the story of Basil’s next younger brother, Naucratius. Though a talented rhetorician, Naucratius devoted himself to the ascetic life of “solitude and poverty.” 6 Naucratius lived in the woods with Chrysaphius, a former servant and now friend, and the two of them provided food for a community of poor and sick old people. Naucratius and Chrysaphius tragically died in a hunting accident that shook Basil’s whole family.

Silvas plausibly suggests that it was the death of Naucratius that brought Basil home from Athens.

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