Feast day: January 2
St. Basil the Great
Bishop of Caesarea who defended the divinity of Christ against Arianism and built one of history's first hospital complexes, the Basiliad.
Basil was born about 329 into a remarkable Christian family of Cappadocia in Asia Minor — a household that produced several saints, including his grandmother Macrina, his sister St. Macrina the Younger, and his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa. Brilliantly educated at Constantinople and Athens, where he formed a lifelong friendship with St. Gregory of Nazianzus, he seemed destined for a great worldly career until, under his sister's influence, he renounced it for God.
He traveled to study the monks of Egypt and Syria, then settled as a hermit and drew companions around him, for whom he wrote rules of community life that remain to this day the foundation of monasticism in the Eastern Church. Reason, moderation, common prayer, and work for others marked his vision of the monastic life, in deliberate contrast to extreme and solitary austerities.
Made bishop of Caesarea, he became, after Athanasius, the great defender of the orthodox faith in the East against the Arians, insisting on the full divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and standing firm even when threatened by the emperor's officers — to whom he calmly replied that they could not frighten a man who had nothing to lose. His preaching, letters, and theological works rank him among the greatest of the Fathers.
He matched his theology with action, building on the edge of his city a vast complex of charity — the 'Basiliad' — with a hospital, a hostel, and homes for the poor, the sick, and the leprous, one of the first institutions of its kind in history. Worn out by labor and ill health, he died on January 1, 379. Honored as a Father and Doctor of the Church, he is, in the East, one of the Three Holy Hierarchs.
He essentially invented the charitable hospital — a whole city of care for the poor and sick, centuries before modern medicine.
“The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat, which you guard in your chest, belongs to the naked.”
— St. Basil the Great
Image: Unknown authorUnknown author (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/02330b.htm
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