gregorius (iii)

He was obviously somebody... 

who was steeped in great prayer.

I think we can see his holiness, the mystical quality of his work, from his scriptural writings. As I was saying, he spent years contemplating Sacred Scripture, seeing it as needed, the kind of nourishment that he needs. And therefore, in being in him as well a humility to listen to scripture rather than try to impose one's own expectations on it... intellectual humility of searching, of meditating and pondering on the realities of Scripture, and allowing it to become part of you, to listen to what God is saying.

E.g. the Moralia in Job...

When we hear the name Job... it's suffering... Gregory, he saw the moral sense of scripture as primary. In other words, we find in Scripture how to lead our lives. How to be moral? It flows then from being an authentic believer. How rich that is for us today. How universal and timeless! And that can only be accomplished from years of prayer and contemplation, of 'contemplatio', on the Word of God.

There is always a deep concern... for people's final destiny... He was taken first and foremost with the salvation of souls...

Hé sent out... Augustin to England e.g. to convert the Saxons...

He took the decision to send out his monks, his priests to the darkest parts of Europe... to the unimaginable vast stretches of territory beyónd the confines of what used to be the Roman Colony in Britain, all the way into Eastern Europe, into the lands beyond the Rhine... this was dark dark territory.

The conversion of their souls, bringing them to Christ... was his greatest worry.

And I would say his greatest accomplishment.

We owe an incredible debt to those men, we will never know their names, who went into those dark places... to be that 'Lumen Gentium', to be that Light...

We owe so much to that Servus Servorum Dei !!...

~bron~