St Gregory of Nyssa - Becoming God's Friend

[ComplineSanFran]

For those of us in The Episcopal Church, it’s the Feast Day of St Gregory of Nyssa. One of his most well-known works ended by telling us that we should not do good for hope of rewards, nor avoid sin for fear of punishment. Rather, the only thing worthy of desire is becoming God’s Friend.

These are wonderful words.

“This is true perfection: not to avoid a wicked life because like slaves we servilely fear punishment, nor to do good because we hope for rewards, as if cashing in on the virtuous life by some business-like arrangement. On the contrary, disregarding all those things for which we hope and which have been reserved by promise, we regard falling from God’s friendship as the only thing dreadful and we consider becoming God’s friend the only thing worthy of honor and desire. This, as I have said, is the perfection of life.”

– Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses

 

[Mintaka]

The flip side, however, was that he tells us approvingly that his sister, St. Macrina the Younger, taught that any part of you that was not Christlike and full of love would burn and burn away painfully after death, because God is a consuming Fire. So if you’re the opposite of being full of love and Christ-like, you could burn away completely… and that’s Hell.

St. Greg was sort of the black sheep of his family of saints, even though he did eventually clean up his act and even become a bishop and theologian. So there’s a lot of both carrot and stick in his writings.

 

[AmbroseSJ]

Apropos of this I just received my latest volume from the Catholic University of America Press, the Fathers of the Church Series: Volume 131, St. Gregory Nyssa: The Anti-Apollinarian Writings.