Wednesday of the 22nd
Week in Ordinary Time
Memorial of Saint Gregory the Great
September 3, 2014 6:30am
Probably no one in this chapel
will ever be a pope or a contemplative monk.
Saint Gregory the Great whom we
honor today was at first a contemplative monk and then a pope.
And he has two messages for us.
First, Gregory became a monk in a
monastery in Rome.
He very much enjoyed and felt
called to a prayerful, quiet, contemplative life.
But, in the year 590, he was
elected to the papacy.
He probably struggled to maintain
some of his monastic prayerfulness in his busy life as a pope.
He must have done that, because
he made many wise decisions as pope in a very challenging time of history.
So maybe we can identify with
Saint Gregory in this way.
We probably feel a tension in our
lives between making time for prayer and attending to our family and job
responsibilities.
Maybe the very tension is
something that God wants for us and if we respond creatively to it, we can do
good things, just as Saint Gregory did.
So he is a good example in that
way for each of us.
And second, Gregory came to be
known as Gregory the Great for his excellent leadership as Pope.
It is an appropriate title for
him.
And yet, Gregory preferred
another title: “Servant of the Servants of God.”
He apparently coined this title
and this is how he looked at himself as pope.
And in that, he is a good example
for us priests and for bishops and, in a way, for all who minister and work in
the Church.
