Three Bishops, One Christ
Every January 30th the Holy Orthodox Church celebrates the Synaxis of the Three Hierarchs: Saints Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom. They all lived in that golden century – the 4th century – that gave us the Creed, our theology of the Trinity, the beginnings of monasticism and desert spirituality. It was the century that brought to an end the persecutions of Christians in the Roman Empire and the Christianization of the Roman Empire! It was the century that saw the first construction of major basilicas and cathedrals and the beginnings of iconography. The Liturgy began taking the form that is familiar to us today. It was truly the century that created the Church pretty much as we now know it. A truly remarkable, historic phase in Church history.
At the center of all these developments were some of the greatest Fathers of the Church: St. Athanasius the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Anthony the Great. . . and the Holy Three Hierarchs. Each of the three has his own major feast day: Basil on January 1st, Gregory on January 25th, and Chrysostom on November 13th. Why were these three saints honored in this special way? Why in addition to their personal feast days were they honored as a group, a trio of church leaders? First I would say was their shared classical heritage. All three were true Greeks in the best classical sense. They were masters of the classical Greek language and they represented the final flowering of the classical worldview – but the classical worldview as transformed and enriched by the light of Christ. Every sentence they wrote or spoke gave glory to the God in Trinity who had been revealed with the coming into the world of Jesus Christ. They understood that with the coming of Jesus, all the best that already existed among human beings was sanctified and brought into the service of God’s kingdom. Our own Orthodox understanding of the world’s potential to be holy and transformed into revealing God as Trinity is due to these three men.
They are the Three Hierarchs. The Church is hierarchal, with a structure of leadership and responsibility. The Church is not what many people today think it should be: a free-for-all organization of anything goes. The churches that go for the anything-goes idea are steadily shutting their doors or are turning into entertainment centers that pretend to preach the Bible. Our Orthodox Church sticks to our guns and refuses to budge to accommodate the newest shift in the ideological or cultural wars. The Three Hierarchs are honored every year as reminders that there are things worth preserving and promoting, and even dying for. The Gospel for one; the centrality of Christ; and the best and most enduring that human culture and endeavor have produced. All three had different gifts and thus served the Church of Christ in different ways.
Basil had administrative gifts and encouraged the organization of monasteries. He wrote a major treatise on the Holy Spirit, and he answered countless letters and requests for direction as the Church was settling into its new relationship with the State. He also gave us a Liturgy that the Orthodox Church still uses ten times a year instead of the more normal Liturgy of St. Chrysostom. Basil organized much charitable work and the first hospitals of the Church.
Gregory is called The Theologian because of five treatises that he wrote perfectly expressing the belief of the Church in God as Trinity. He preferred the solitary life and very reluctantly accepted to be a bishop for as short a time as possible. Professor Verhovskoy at St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary used to say that Gregory is the only Father of the Church who was 100% perfect in his Orthodoxy. Indeed, it is impossible to find anything disputable in his preaching and writing. He wrote in exquisite classical Greek and composed many poems, some of which became hymns of the Church.
Finally, John Chrysostom, “the Golden-Mouthed.” He wasn’t a theologian like Gregory, and he wasn’t an administrator and organizer like Basil. He was a preacher. And his preaching was not what people today call preaching. He did not aim to convert people to Christ in the manipulative way common today. His purpose in preaching was to convert people who claimed to believe in Christ to being followers of Christ, and disciples of Christ, and believers in the words of Christ, and doers of the words of Christ. His preaching was tough, especially against the rich and powerful, and the Empire in response exiled him to a remote area where he died. But his words were not silenced and were preserved in books that can still be read. John Chrysostom also gave us the Liturgy that we celebrate every Sunday, except on the Sundays of Lent when we use the Liturgy of St. Basil.
St. Nikolai Velimirović wrote a beautiful hymn of praise in his Prologue of Ohrid:
Fasting and faith—Basil,
Theology—Gregory,
Acts of charity—Chrysostom,
Golden mouths, mouths of honey!
All laborers of one work:
Three separately—three angels,
The three together, as God is one,
No one is chief, no one is secondary.
In eternity they all agree,
You invoke one, all three help;
You hymn one, all three hear;
You glorify one, all three rejoice.
Three men, one whole;
Three hierarchs, one work;
Three names, one glory;
To all three of them, Christ is the Head.
“Christ is the Head” – that’s the bottom line of every saint and of every one who yearns to be a saint; which should be all of us. This is why we honor saints and pray to saints. The bare halls in which many churches meet fail to communicate the fiery preaching and teaching of these three church leaders. Barren and cold is much of today’s Christianity, without the warmth of fellowship in the holiness of saintly men and women who lived to honor Christ, the true Head of the Church. And in honoring Christ they also bring our prayers to his presence, so we can be united to Christ with them. It is the height of arrogance when many Christians refuse to honor the saints while they treat their church leaders as celebrities with corporate rich salaries and private planes. No, not Basil, not Gregory, not Chrysostom – not for them the trappings of commercialized Christianity. They were the real thing. And we have no hesitation honoring them, venerating them and beseeching them to pray for us and for the Church as a whole as we face the temptations of a world going mad.
Holy Three Hierarchs pray for us before we totally lose our way!
May the Lord keep us all firm in our Orthodox faith, so none of us wander off to where there is no holiness sought or honored.
In Christ’s love,
Father Constantine Sarantidis