November 20, 2022 - "Gregory the First"

Last week we looked at the life and accomplishments of Pope Saint Leo the Great.  Ninety years after Leo died in 461, Gregory the First, the second Pope (and Doctor of the Church) to receive the title of Great, was born.  Gregory was from an important senatorial family.  Most of his adult life was lived in the midst of the Lombard invasions, the last and the worst of the barbarian onslaughts that devastated Italy at the end of the Western Empire. As a young man he served as prefect of Rome.  After five years at this post, he resigned from his position to enter monastic life.  Gregory used his family resources to establish seven monasteries and entered the house he established in Rome (St. Andrew on the Caelian Hill).  His intention was to spend the rest of his life as a simple monk in the monastery.  But Pope Pelagius II convinced him to serve as his diplomatic representative at the imperial court at Constantinople. After serving at that post for six years, Gregory was elected the abbot of the monastery of St. Andrew on the Caelian Hill. Gregory was to spend the next twenty-six years in public roles in the church.  In time his experiences made him one of the most effective bishops of Rome. 
 
When Gregory was fifty, the clergy and people of Rome elected him pope in 590.  Gregory was both firm and direct in his dealings with people.  He removed unworthy priests from office, forbade taking money for many services, emptied the papal treasury to ransom prisoners of the Lombards in northern Italy and to care for persecuted Jews as well as for victims of plague and famine.  The conversion of England was very much on his mind—so much so that he sent forty monks from the monastery of St. Andrew on the Caelian hill to be missionaries there.  Gregory was also known for his reform of the liturgy and for strengthening the importance of sound teaching of the faith.  An Anglican theologian once made this assessment of Gregory’s papacy: 
 
It is impossible to conceive what would have been the confusion, the lawlessness, the chaotic state of the Middle Ages without the medieval papacy; and of the medieval papacy, the real founder is Gregory the Great.
 
One of Gregory’s most influential books was Pastoral Care, which was read for centuries after his death in 604.  In Pastoral Care Gregory described the duties and qualities of a bishop.  Specifically, Gregory described bishops as physicians who were to preach and to enforce ecclesiastical discipline.  He was a skillful preacher and could readily apply the daily Gospel reading to the needs of his listeners.
 
Gregory would have been happy remaining as a simple monk at the monastery of St. Andrew on the Caelian Hill.  He willingly served the church in other ways when asked to do so.  In this he sacrificed his own preferences, especially when he was called to be the bishop of Rome.  Once he was called to service in the church, he gave his considerable energies and talents completely to this work.
 
Until next week,
Fr. John