You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints.

This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Catholic Saints. I'm Taylor Kemp, the director of

formed and with me today is Dr. Christopher Mooney. Thanks for having me, Taylor. I almost

hazarded your middle name there and I decided not to. Dr. Mooney, it is great to have you.

You're a professor here at the graduate school and today we are talking about St. Gregory Nazianzus.

So where should we begin to learn

about this saint? Well, maybe I can say a little bit about his biography. I think Gregory's life

is a nice sort of prelude to get to know him. So Gregory lived during the fourth century in the east

in a period that's often thought of as the golden age of patristic theology,

the theology of the father. So he died around 390, was born around 330. His father before him was a

bishop. Now that sounds weird to us today, but, you know, clerical and episcical celibus, he wasn't

as established then.

It's good to point that out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But his father was actually converted by his mother, and then his father became bishop.

And Gregory's called Gregory of Nazianzzias because their family estate was near Nazianzis,

which was a small town in modern modern day Turkey called Capadocia.

So is he one of the Capodosian? He's one of the Capodosians. That's right. Yeah, along with Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nissa. So Gregory, you know, grew up in a Christian family.

His father was the bishop. And like a lot of, you know,

well-to-do Romans at the time, his father had, his family had ambitious plans of education

for him. He went to all the greatest cities in the eastern part of the empire to study,

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