While New Year celebrations are in full swing every Eastern Orthodox Church throughout the world will celebrate the Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil whose day it is.
Basil was born at Caesarea in Cappadocia (Asia Minor) to a distinguished and wealthy Christian family in 329. A delicate child brought up by his grandmother and his mother he suffered from ill-health all his life. He enjoyed the best education available, at Caesarea, Constantinople, and Athens. Here he became a close friend of the future saint Gregory of Nazianzen.
Basil became a monk, for a short while in Syria and Egypt before settling (c.358) as a hermit near Neo-Caesarea. Soon he was joined by Gregory and together they preached to the people as well as practising a life of contemplation. Basil refused numerous invitations from the emperor to court and only left his solitude when his bishop, Eusebius, called him to defend the Church against the persecution of the Arian emperor Valens. He became bishop of Caesarea in 370 and vigorously opposed various forms of Arian heterodoxy. He distributed his inheritance to the poor and organized a soup kitchen where he served food to the hungry.
As bishop he built a new town called the Basiliad, which included a church, a hospital and a guesthouse staffed with doctors, nurses, and other ancillary staff. He would preach both morning and evening to vast congregations and organized services before daybreak. His extensive correspondence reveals his concern for pastoral care: the proper selection of candidates for Orders, the reform of thieves and prostitutes, and of the correction of secular officials too severe in their judgement. Above all he promoted Christian education.
Basil was the father of monasticism: to this day, nearly all monks and nuns of the Greek Church follow his rule which greatly influenced Saint Benedict. He emphasised community life, liturgical prayer, and manual work. The rule allowed for the development of almsgiving, hospitals, and guesthouses in which the monks worked. His most important writings are on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. He also stressed the equality of both genders stating that their common creation was of equal honour and dignity; they have the same capacity and activity and will be given the same reward.
There are several famous Basil quotes e.g. “The bread you store belongs to the hungry. The clothes you accumulate belong to the naked. The shoes that you have in your closet are for the barefoot. The money you bury deep into the ground to keep it safe, belongs to the poor. You were unfair to as many people as you could have helped and you did not.”
Basil was one of the Fathers at the Council of Constantinople 360 and, as the age of persecution ended, he revised the Divine Liturgy into the form that is still in use. The influence of Saint Basil on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer is the beautiful Prayer of Humble Access in the service of Holy Communion. Archbishop Cranmer remodelled the epiclesis (invocation of the Holy Spirit) from the Liturgy of Saint Basil. In the West he is commemorated as a ‘doctor of the Church’; in the East he is one of three Holy Hierarchs, Saint Basil, Saint Gregory the Theologian and Saint John Chrysostom. They were highly influential bishops of the early church who played pivotal roles in shaping Christian theology.
In Greek Orthodox tradition, Basil brings gifts to children every 1 January (St Basil’s Day). At the conclusion of the Liturgy it is traditional to serve vasilopita, a rich bread baked with a coin inside. The tradition is attributed to St. Basil, who when a bishop, wanted to distribute money to the poor and commissioned some women to bake sweetened bread, in which he arranged to place gold coins.
Saint Basil died on Jan.1st 379 whilst crowds were praying for him in the street outside, he was just 49. All Caesarea was present at his burying in ‘the tomb of his fathers’, Jews and heathen as well as Christians, and strangers from outlying parts.
Christopher Jobson
Feature Image: Roundel_with_Saint_Basil_the_Great_with_a_Donor_MET_cdi32-24-39s1, Wikicommons, PD