The Church commemorates one of its greatest theologians, Bishop Gregory of Nyssa.
He was born in the Neocesarea of Pontus in AD 332 and he was a brother of Saint Basil the Great. He was first ordained a reader and later, at the age of forty, he was ordained bishop of Nyssa of Cappadocia.
The followers of the Arianism accused him of noncanonical ordination and defrocked him, forcing him to wander and hide from the people. However, he returned to Nyssa, where he was triumphantly welcomed.
Saint Gregory attended the Synod of Antioch, which deemed Apollinarism heretical, for claiming that Jesus Christ is not a perfect God nor a perfect man. He refuted Apolinaris’s heterodoxy, as he later did at the Second Ecumenical Council in AD 381 in Constantinople, routing the Pneumatomachi.
For his great contribution to the Orthodox Church, Gregory of Nyssa was rightly called “Father of Fathers” while Theodosius the Great called him the pillar of Orthodoxy. He died peacefully in AD 394. He was author of many important works: exegetical, dogmatic, catechetical, ethical, panegyric, encomia, epitaphs and a eulogy for his brother Basil the Great.
The Fathers and Teachers of the Church, such as Gregory of Nyssa, teach us that the combination of the study of Theology with humility, as well as human knowledge with spiritual practice in Christ, provide man with the good path to get closer to God.
Source: Church of Cyprus
