January 29, 2023 - "Saint Gregory of Narek"

In April 2015, Pope Francis celebrated a Mass commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the horrific massacre in which many innocent Armenians died as confessors and martyrs for the name of Christ. On that occasion Pope Francis named Saint Gregory of Narek (ca. 951-1003) a Doctor of the Church.  Gregory was born into a family that was dedicated to the church.  His father, Khosrov Antsevatsi, served as a bishop and theologian in the Armenian church.  After his wife’s death, the bishop entrusted young Gregory to the care of an uncle, Anania, a respected scholar and monk who had founded the Narek Monastery (known as Narekavank) in what is today Eastern Turkey.  Gregory remained at that monastery for the rest of his life.
 
We do not have many details of Gregory’s life, but hints of his years of pain and suffering are clearly present in his writings, particularly his Book of Lamentations. The ninety-five lamentations are grouped together and mirror the various stages of the liturgy from the dismissal of the catechumens, the profession of faith, Communion, to the final prayers in preparation for death and judgment.
 
Seventy years after Gregory died, the Seljuk Turks defeated the forces of the Byzantine emperor at a battle in the Armenian town of Manzikert.  As the Byzantine emperor’s army retreated to Constantinople, the Turks and their allies overran what had been Armenian and Byzantine territory, including St. Gregory’s Narekavank.
 
Despite the conquest of the Armenian territory by the Turks and their allies. Narekavank thrived for nearly a thousand years, becoming an important center of illuminated manuscript production, scholarship, pilgrimage, and prayer.  Early in the twentieth century, the monks established a boarding school and a seminary within its walls.  This was a source of pride for the influential and wealthy Armenians of Ottoman, Turkey, who dominated trade in luxury goods and spices and served as bureaucrats for the sultan.
 
However, the development of national movements that began in the Ottoman provinces in the Balkans, significantly altered the position of the Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire, especially the Armenians.  Fearful of the national aspirations of the empire’s Armenians—which had some support from France, Great Britain, and Russia, agents of the Ottoman sultan assaulted Armenian communities and institutions, beginning with isolated pogroms in 1894.  Eventually, these incidents spread throughout the empire, accelerated after the Ottoman Turks entered World War One as an ally of Germany and Austria.  By 1923, some 1,500,000 Armenians perished in what is called today the Armenian Genocide.  Those who survived, perhaps 250,000 people, fled to Lebanon and Turkey.
 
In 1915, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were driven from their communities—many to their deaths.  Narekavank, and the tomb of its great saint, was abandoned.  Open to the elements, the monastery was defiled, and its churches pillaged.
 
Sadly, nothing remains today of this important center of the Eastern Christian tradition.  Yet the writings of St. Gregory of Narek, the thirty-sixth Doctor of the Church, survive.
 
Let me close this column with this appreciation of St. Gregory of Narek by Pope Francis in his letter to the Armenians commemorating the centenary of the horrific massacre of the Armenians in 1915, which also provided the occasion in which Pope Francis named St. Gregory of Narek a Doctor of the Church:
 
Saint Gregory of Narek, a monk of the tenth century, knew how to express the sentiments of your people more than anyone.  He gave voice to the cry, which became a prayer, of a sinful and sorrowful humanity, oppressed by the anguish of its powerlessness, but illuminated by the splendor of God’s love and open to the hope of his salvific intervention, which is capable of transforming all things. “Through his strength I wait with certain expectation believing with unwavering hope that…I shall be saved by the Lord’s mighty hand and…that I will see the Lord himself in his mercy and compassion and receive the legacy of heaven” (Saint Gregory of Narek, Book of Lamentations, XII).
 
Until next week,
Fr. John