Transcript

One of the most interesting and beautiful stories of St. Basil is Verve Vasilopita.

We use the Vasilopita every year when we commemorate him on the 1st of January, sweet bread, or the St. Basil bread, as we call it.

The era that they lived in was a very trying and very polemic era.

Even though Christianity was freed, by the time it filtered down to the people into the far-reaching areas, it took years many times.

And there were bands of barbarians who would run through the country and pillage and, and, and s- and then some of them were savage, and they would, they would steal, and they would, they would burn towns down.

Uh, and one such invasion, word was given to St. Basil that neighboring towns were being pillaged by some very corrupt pagans.

And upon knowing this, he gathered his people together, and he asked them to bring the most precious piece of gold that they had.

And they gathered them together, and when the barbarians entered the town, the general of the barbarians came to, to Basil.

And Basil said, We're really glad to see you.

Uh, this general asked, Uh, aren't you afraid we, we are here to steal all of your treasures?

Basil said, No, no.

We understand why you have come, and we have offered, we're offering you this gift of this great gold, bag of gold.

And upon looking at all these treasures, this general was astounded and moved and just left the town, bid them farewell.

Left the town not pillaging and not even taking the bag of gold with him.

Basil had this great treasure in front of him, and he asked the bakers of the town to bake many loaves of bread, as many loaves of bread as he had gold treasures in the bag.

And he put one of those gold coins or those gold treasures in each one of the breads.

Ironically enough, mystically enough, as faith would have it, and as the blessings of the Lord would have it, each person received back in the loaf of bread the exact coin or the exact piece of gold that they had given St. Basil to save the town.

This is what leadership is about, is about.

This is what being ordained and blessed of God is about.

This is what being anointed is about by God,

A bishop.

in the truest sense of the word.

Saint Basil was born in 329 in Cappadocia, which was a rugged area of central Asia Minor.

Saint Basil's family was a very wealthy family.

The father of the family was a lawyer.

Four of the ten siblings became saints of the church.

Saint Peter of Sevastia, Saint Macrina, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, and of course, Saint Basil the Great.

At the age of 21, Saint Basil went to the University of Athens, um, to get his education.

He was able to take the education from the University of Athens, which is the corresponding Harvard of ta- nowadays.

It was the only university, perhaps of Alexandria as well.

Uh, the University of Athens was considered to be one of the greatest places of learning in the world.

And, uh, Saint Basil accordingly took full advantage of that.

This is where he developed the mind that would lead him to greater things.

Saint Basil had the b- He was a privileged person, so he had the options, probably, to for a good education an- you know, for his time, which was rare.

Saint Basil, during that time, met a individual by the name of Gregory.

Um, we came to know him as Gregory Nazianzos.

I think my professor's gonna kill me 'cause I used Nazianzos.

He says, Never use Nazianzos.

Technically, the title Gregory of Nazianzos is really what the Catholics can call him.

The Orthodox more, uh, call him the theologian.

They, they were the same person.

They thought the same.

They, they learned from the same teachers.

They had the same mentors and, and their, their hopes and their dreams and their direction was the same, even though Gregory, uh, didn't put it to work as quickly as Basil did.

After he left the University of Athens, he was offered a chair at the University of Caesarea, and also, uh, was a lawyer in his father's practice.

Upon returning from Athens and accepting the seat, and al- also going to work, uh, in his father's law practice, um, Macrina is the only one that, um, challenges his position.

Uh, being full of himself and being, uh, outshining all of the others in the area, uh, she tells him how arrogant he is.

Because she was with Christian.

And at that point, some people say that Basil wasn't a Christian yet.

He had not embraced the Christian faith totally.

So she observed him kind of as an individual who's, we could say, a lost sheep in, uh, faith because all he's focusing on was these classics, these arts, and not focusing on what gave these classics, gave these arts.

God Himself.

Accomplishing so much so quickly, uh, not only as a professor in the university, but also with his father's law practice that he, um, participated in.

Basil's life was going very smoothly until one day, a tragedy happened in the family.

He had a younger brother named Navkratios.

And, uh, Navkratios, um, was considered to be, in the family, the golden boy.

One of the in- those individuals that was the shining light in a mother's and father's eyes.

He was supposed to be stronger than Basil, more educated, smarter than Basil, even more religious than Basil.

And, uh, one day, Navkratios went to, um, went fishing .

and, they found him dead.

He just died, and they still don't know why it happened.

The loss of her golden child, Navkratios, must have been devastating for Saint Basil's mother.

Any mother that loses her child is painful.

I can't help but to think of Jesus Christ when he was on the cross and he was suffering.

Her mother, too, must have been in pain.

In fact, hymnographers, eh, at our Holy Thursday service, they write, My son, where is the good in all of this that you are doing?

God took these devastations, these tragedies, in the life of Saint Basil and, um, used them to be able to bring Saint Basil closer to the church, to become a warrior, to become a defender of the faith, because he saw everyone else was going to abandon him, and he was gonna be the only one.

Yet even though being the only one, he was not gonna stand alone.

The death of his younger brother had a tremendous impact on him.

Um, as a person of philosophy, uh, and how erudite he was, he could not find the answer to his pain.

It was so devastating for him.

He left the university.

Not knowing where to turn, he turned for the support of his family, and in that support, and in that love, because they were very loving to each other, he asked Macrina about Jesus Christ.

From that point on, Basil's life, and probably the Christian world, would never turn back.

From that point on, Christ had found a warrior.

Christ had found his agent to take Christianity to the next level, in history.

After experiencing Christianity on so many levels, through his conversion and his baptism, the one thing that made a great impression on him was a colony of women that Macrina had organized, probably one of the first monasteries of that era.

And there were monasteries before that time, but they were not organizations like Macrina had put together.

It was a organization of prayer.

It was an organization of service to people.

It was an organiz- organized group of women that understood Christ and Christianity on a very special level.

Saint Basil starts to go on a spiritual journey.

He visits the monasteries in Syria, Palestine.

He observes the, the monks, or should I say the hermits, living, you know, in places.

And of course, their goals were salvation, and their goals were, were an aesthetic ascent for them.

But that wasn't good enough for Basil.

He saw everyone as an individual, separate, and he felt that, through the example of his sister, Macrina, uniting a community, he wanted to unite them together as a community.

So, he started convincing them, speaking to them, and trying to bring them together so they, they can be, themselves, um, can become a community.

And he created synobitic monasticism, a communal monasticism, a community.

He told monks, Get together, just like we have a church, a community.

Unite yourselves.

Bring yourselves together.

An abbot was chosen to lead the group, to direct the group, to confess, to be the confessor.

But yet, it was a productive society.

It produced icons, iconographers.

It produced writers.

It produced confessors.

It produced lectures on all kinds of things, and it became not simply a way where a person could go inward, but could also take the strength of the inside and turn it to the outside and make it productive in society.

Incredible, incredible achievement that nobody in history of the church had done up to that time.

Brother-in-law was in the Holy Mount for 16 years.

Most of which, most of the time he was a, he was a priest monk.

And a number of years ago, I got to go there to witness his ordination into the priesthood.

And here you have the passion of Orthodoxy on Mount Athos.

And I was particularly at the Monastery of, um, Saint Paul, where my brother-in-law was.

And yet, you see these, these champions and these soldiers and athletes for Christ, and in their midst there is such humility, compassion, and love.

You, you, you not only witness it in their words and their manners, somehow even in their, in their appearance of their face and their skin.

Um, there, there's something just incredibly holy there.

And it's that combination of obedience, of steadfastness, of faith, and yet of humility, meekness, love, and forgiveness for everyone and for all creation.

It's amazing, 1600 years later, that the monasteries of today still use the rules and regulations Saint Basil himself established.

They say Saint Basil was the pillar foundation of these regulations, so these

Unfortunately, a time came in Saint Basil's life while he was enjoying his monastic life, that the Holy Spirit must have compelled him to go out and to help the people in Caesarea, for they were, um, enduring, uh, many atrocities, famine, sicknesses, plagues.

Basil looked outside from the monastery, and he saw the suffering of these people, and he realized that his calling was to go out and help and to do service to these people.

And when he was asked to become a priest, he quickly responded in a positive manner, a response he never would have done .

had he not seen the pain and the need of his people for his ministry.

At this point and time, the archbishop dies, and Basil now sees the path that is before him.

The insidious emperor, Valens, had begun a rampage throughout the country, throughout Asia Minor, throughout the empire, the Roman Empire.

One of the last Roman emperors to really persecute Christianity.

But he did it in a worse way because he had embraced Arianism.

Arianism was, uh, the heresy that took place by an individual who was named Arius.

Arius was a very intelligent person, uh, was very eloquent, and presented his theology very well.

And his theology was that Jesus, while being good person, a wonderful person, a fine example, was nonetheless not God.

He was like a second-class god.

He was a man who somehow had been adopted by God and given godly powers, but not God of the same essence as God the Father.

And Saint Basil basically stood alone, uh, against Valens.

Many other bishops just kinda fell in line with whatever the government, the emperor who ruled at that particular time told them.

And Valens, being an, uh, an Arian, um, pressed upon many people his belief.

The election for bishop of Caesarea came down to one vote.

And only the vote of Gregory the Theologian's father, who was on his deathbed, who was carried in physically to cast the last vote and to utter the name of Basil, allowed him to ascend the throne to become a bishop, and to be elected as archbishop of Caesarea, Cappadocia.

He was, um, assigned 11 provinces.

And, um, if we compare them to, uh, today, they were probably the land mass of the from the Mississippi River, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

He decided very quickly in his ministry that as archbishop he had to set the example, and probably was the first one in church history to start a community for people in need.

For those less fortunate that we Just as Christ has taught us to feed our brothers and our sisters, he took this quite literally and built what was known as New Town, a community, a cluster of buildings and a facility to house, uh, travelers that were sick or lost.

Um, people in, you know, in hunger situations that had no food.

Indeed, there is some modern sociologists who claim him to be father of sociology.

And he had established a number of these philanthropic agencies.

Homes, foundations, if you will.

And the other thing was the nursing homes, the orphanage, the orphanages, and the hospitals the way we know them now before.

Because when do you think the secular hospitals start really coming into play?

It was only the past 100 years.

Before that, all the hospitals were run by the churches.

Because Basil's popularity was now eclipsing the growth of Arianism, the emperor, knowing that he could never compete on this level, decided that he had had basically enough.

And of course, his jealousy now ultimately turns into the emperor wanting to either convert Basil, talk to him, and bring him into the faith, or get rid of him completely.

There's a, there's a, a wonderful story where Valens, being so infuriated with Saint Basil, doesn't go see him himself, that was a rare occasion, but sends, um, one of his highest officials by the name of, uh, Modestus.

Modestus challenged Basil on a number of levels, but it all boiled down to Arianism.

It all boiled down to the theological issue that Christ was both God and man as the first ecumenical council had passed.

Modestus tried to impose the teachings of Arius in the debate he had with Basil, but Bas- Basil never ever budged.

Modestus becomes so enraged.

He says, You know, you know what I could do to you?

I could take away all your possessions, leave you naked.

I could kill you.

I could banish you from the empire.

And Saint Basil basically says, Well, my possessions are none.

Given everything I have to the poor.

Basil said, Wherever you banish me, God will be with me.

As far as death is, I don't fear death either because actually that means I will be closer with my, my Lord sooner than later.

So Modestus says to him, You know something?

No one has ever spoken to me like that.

How dare you?

Basil turns to him and simply says, It is obvious that you have never met a real bishop.

In times, we are humble and simple when we have to show love.

But in times of a defense of the faith, we are strong and fierce.

The emperor finally decides that he is going to meet Basil face-to-face.

It was during epiphany, um, during divine liturgy.

And immediately following divine liturgy, the emperor talks to Saint Basil.

He sit down.

And Basil shows him all the works that he's doing, especially New Town, building that hospital.

And after the emperor sees this and speaks with Saint Basil, he dedicates his life to be able to help Saint Basil and to work and give him whatever he needs to build this New Town.

The emperor never had any intention of helping Basil with New Town.

And after returning home, the emperor wrote a writ of banishment, that Basil be banished from the empire.

Once the emperor signed the letter of banishment, the emperor's son became deathly ill.

We have to realize that this was the only son of the emperor.

This was the heir to the throne.

And his wife, the empress, sees this, that this is a punishment from God, and she tells that to Emperor Valens that, This is why our son is sick, is because what you're doing to Saint Basil, banishing him.

Soon after, a note from the wife of the emperor came to Basil asking him to come and pray over the son.

At this point, it, it's interesting to note that even the enemy and all the powers of evil that were against them for teaching the godly truths, we see how Saint Ba- Basil valiantly overcomes that and shows his other virtue of agape and goes and prays over this young boy.

And of course, what happened afterwards, the child rose.

The interesting fact though is that sometime later, Dominica and Valens have their son baptized, but they have him baptized at the hands of an Arian bishop.

And after the child is baptized by this bishop, the child dies.

The emperor is furious and of course, who does he blame?

Saint Basil.

The emperor prepares one more writ of banishment to try and end this problem forever.

And as he put the pen to the paper, the pen split in three and he was not able to write one word.

So immediately, the emperor gave up.

And Basil's will and his dedication to God, his faith, overcame all the Arian heresy, all the Arianisms that the emperor tried to shove on him.

And Saint Basil ruled as archbishop for another seven years after his death.

It seemed that the battles that he had waged against Valens and against Arianism, the battles he had waged in his own community and his own ministry building these institutions, obviously it took resources and it took a lot of effort, took its toll on Basil.

And finally, Basil succumbed to illness at only 49 years old.

It's ironic that even in death, Basil was able to outduel his arch nemesis 'cause five months before Basil died, Valens died.

And with that, also the Arian heresy died out.

So therefore, God maybe in his own divine province, saw his servant has succeeded and done his work as the soldier in defense of the church.

And he knew that he had to wear now the crown of glory, so he took him to Heaven with him.

Saint Basil, like many of the very famous saints, only served as a bishop for a few years, maybe eight or 10 years.

I don't remember exactly.

And it's amazing that in that little period of time, they gave so much of themselves, uh, that they are remembered so strongly until today.

Some of us would think of great athletes or great movie stars that have been around forever and they don't have that kind of fame and recognition and notoriety.

Where these men and holy woman served in their capacity, sometimes for just a few years, but they did something of such a great degree that they are always remembered to this day and were even named after them.

He was a theologian par excellence.

He wrote the greatest treatise of the Holy Trinity that we use even today in theological circles as the basis for our theology.

To believe that there are three persons in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but it's really one God.

And to be able to explain that and to be able to make that a real part of your life, Basil wrote in very, very brilliant and eloquent terms.

In the time of Saint Basil and Saint Gregory, this was the time when Christianity was able to come out and it needed to be put in some kind of systematic way of thinking.

Because Saint Basil and Saint Gregory were well-educated, they were able to u- use the concepts of Greek philosophy, of Platonic and es- m- mostly Platonic kinds of thinking.

And this was very important in developing our understanding of God, of the Holy Trinity, of the humanity of Christ, and of the divinity of Christ.

Of course if you ask Basil about that treatise, which they did many times in his life, he claimed that he did not write that treatise.

That was not his writing.

They said, But it bears your handwriting.

He says, Oh yes, the pen in my hand definitely wrote those words, but it was the Holy Spirit.

I could never have conceptually adapted my weak and my limited intelligence to be able to produce that work.

We have a beautiful icon, uh, in the Church of Saint Basil in Chicago of the angel from Heaven bringing down from God the pen so Saint Basil could write, and a book that he is holding in his hand that is blank.

Because in respect to what God is able to produce or teach us, all we could produce as mere humans is blank pages.

I remember as a seminarian how frustrating it was for me when I was studying the holy canons for a class and we had to memorize, you know, the penance given for someone who broke any particular canon.

And so I would memorize what Saint Basil wrote in this dependence.

Only to read a little further down and, and see him saying, But if the person repents or if the person does this, the penance can be eased by X number of years.

I'm thinking, Okay, so I remember the second one.

Well, I read further down and it says, And furthermore, if So you read it and it was like, Well, how many things do I have to, to remember?

but the greatness of the saint was he was so compassionate that he was willing to bend as much as he could, almost like Christ, who was on the cross and bent His will to the Father to die for us.

And uniquely, Saint Basil in the Orthodox Church is considered to be the Santa Claus of the Orthodox faith.

If Basil walked among us today, I think his response to his popularity and all that has been written and all that has been dedicated to him, such as churches, would be different.

Basil would ask a very simple question: What have you done with all of that?

Is it for a purpose?

And even if the purpose was for the glory of God, Basil would not disdain our achievements and our directives to glorify him, but would thank God for the opportunity to be the vehicle to bring man closer to God.

Basil is known as the Archbishop of Caesarea Cappadocia, which was a province.

But he's also called, at the end of that title, the Ouranofondulos.

He is the one This is what it means.

It very difficult.

There are certain words in Greek that you can't translate, but this one is a very difficult one.

And it can be translated, but very difficult to do properly.

He is the one who has opened the heavens to us.

He was all of these things all at once: a writer, a preacher, a teacher, a servant, and a scholar.

He gave us this opportunity to look at heaven, to look at faith, in, in a way that very few people can do, even in one of these aspects.

Fathers of the church believed that he was great because he opened the heavens for us to see.

Through Basil, through his example, through his life, through his teachings, through his writings, we see heaven.

He is the Ouranofondulos.

.