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Twenty-Second Sunday of the Year
1 September 2007
Dear Friends in Christ,
Ecclesia semper reformanda. The Church is always in need of being reformed. On Monday the sacred liturgy celebrates the life and work of one of the greatest reformers in Christian history: Pope Gregory the Great.
Gregory was born in Rome around the year 540 (about eighty years after the collapse of the Western Empire) to a very wealthy patrician family of Christians. Two of Gregory’s distant cousins had already served as Pope, and his Father was a Roman senator. Gregory received the finest education of his day and then served a two-year term as Prefect (or mayor) of Rome. In 573, Gregory’s father died leaving him vast wealth, and he used most of it to found seven monasteries in Italy. The family palace on the Coelian Hill in Rome became the Abbey of St. Andrew, and Gregory himself then became a monk in his own home. In 579, Gregory was sent by Pope Pelagius II to be his ambassador to the court of the Byzantine Emperor Tiberius II. During his seven years of service at the imperial throne, Gregory learned a great deal about the Eastern Church, and that experience prepared Gregory to deal effectively with the Patriarch of Constantinople when he became Pope.
Gregory was elected pope in the summer of 590 when he was about 50 years old. He initially refused the office, but after a great popular acclaim, he accepted the election. Pope Gregory was consecrated and installed as Bishop of Rome on 3 September 590 (which is why his feast is kept on September 3rd). During the fourteen years of his papacy, Gregory proved himself to be a zealous reformer of life in the Church. He sent missionaries to England and appointed the first Archbishop of Canterbury, he reshaped the sacred liturgy of the Western Church and gave his name to the plainchant we still sing, he exerted papal influence over the selection of bishops, he insisted that priests and bishops live upright Christian lives, and wrote about many topics: a biography of St. Benedict, a manual called “Pastoral Care” which set forth the duties of bishops and priests, theological treatises and homilies on the Scriptures, and over 800 letter about Christian living to people of every sort. Fourteen hundred years later, the Church is still always in need of being reformed, and in the life of St. Gregory the Great we have a splendid example of how to do that.
Father Newman
Pope St. Gregory the Great, pray for us.