Dr. John Seehorn (5:17)

He absolutely is. You covered a lot of ground.

Tim Gray (5:20)

I know. Well, I'm sure I missed a lot of things. This guy, he's bigger than life.

Dr. John Seehorn (5:24)

Well. And, you know, one of the things that makes Gregory really incredible is the fact that in many ways, he was born into really difficult times. Gregory was born probably in the year 540. And if you know much about Roman history, you know that this is just a matter of decades after the fall of the last Western Roman emperor. Tim, you mentioned the Byzantine Empire, which of course is our word for it, but they simply thought of themselves as the Roman Empire, only centered in Constantinople.

Unidentified Guest (5:58)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (5:58)

Rather than Rome. And so when Gregory is born, the Roman emperor in Constantinople is Justinian, who's one of the most famous. He really saw himself as a kind of architect of society, of culture. I mean, he commissions an absolutely monumental kind of synthesis of Roman law, the Justinianic code, which is still a kind of touchstone for scholars of legal history. He rebuilds the Hagia Sophia.

Unidentified Guest (6:32)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (6:33)

And he makes it so incredible. It's the same structure that's standing today is the one that was built under Justinian. And he's rumored to have said, when he first walked into it, he looked around and he said to himself, solomon, I have outdone you. And you can see why he'd feel that way. If you can imagine what the Hagia Sophia would have looked like covered in. In icons and mosaics and filled with many people.

Tim Gray (6:59)

Probably. Some of our viewers have probably visited when they visit Turkey, and unfortunately, just recently, it was reverted back to a mosque by the Turks. Just Erdogan just took it back a couple weeks ago.

Dr. John Seehorn (7:13)

Yeah, no, which is a real tragedy. But another thing that Justinian is known for is the reconquest of many lands that had been lost to different barbarian tribes. So from the vandals, for example, St. Augustine died as the Vandals were besieging his city of Hippo, and they'd sort of taken North Africa away from the Roman Empire. Justinian. Well, really, the emperors under or the generals under Justinian reconquered North Africa, and they also went for Italy.

Unidentified Guest (7:48)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (7:48)

And this was actually. They were eventually successful, but it took them forever and they devastated the countryside.

Unidentified Guest (7:57)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (7:58)

And so this is actually the context that Gregory is born into. It's a wealthy aristocratic family, very old Roman Christian family.

Unidentified Guest (8:06)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (8:07)

But during these really difficult times. So Gregory grows up. We don't know much about his education, but we know he had a very good one. But, you know, part of it, Tim, is that he really hides his own learning. He really. He's very averse to anything that's going to look like display or showing off. So even though we're sure he studied Virgil and Cicero and all these greats of Latin literature, he doesn't quote them.

Tim Gray (8:31)

You know, that's one of the things I remember in his writing. He really is afraid of vanity and vainglory and whether it's in the rule, the pastoral rule, where he talks about the danger of success and prosperity. And you can just see his own feeling about that, because here's somebody who started with success and then he does monasteries and then he becomes a monk. But then he's asked to become pope and he has success throughout his career, and he has to put himself in check. He's afraid of that. That's something that's one of his.

Dr. John Seehorn (9:03)

Well, because he thought. He renounced it, right? I mean, so Gregory had sort of risen through the ranks, and he had become prefect of the city of Rome, which is a very important civil office to hold. And then at the age of. I think it was when he was in his early 30s, in the 570s, he renounces it all and he becomes a monk at the monastery of St. Andrews in Rome. And he's not the abbot, he's just an ordinary monk. And as far as we can tell.

Tim Gray (9:36)

He probably thought that was.

Dr. John Seehorn (9:38)

That was it, that was it.

Tim Gray (9:39)

He's out of the world now. He's in the solitude, and he'll talk about the burden of governing and administrating pastoral rule. And later on, when he has to become pope, because he didn't want that. He loved scripture, he loved contemplation and prayer, and he had made the sacrifice to leave the world, and yet the world didn't leave him. And so someone of that kind of talent and holiness gets called out of that.

Dr. John Seehorn (10:04)

And, you know, I think that's really why Gregory is such a genius as a pastor. I mean, Tim, you were talking about the pastoral. We've mentioned it several times, and it actually was recognized in his own time as a spectacular book on leadership. In fact, the Byzantine emperor, the Roman emperor in the east at the time Maurice was his name, knew Latin and read the Pastoral Rule, and he was so impressed by it that, that he immediately ordered it translated into Greek, and he had a copy made for Every bishop in the empire, he said, I want everyone to read Gregory's Pastoral Rule. This is really the way to read.

Tim Gray (10:46)

And that's extraordinary because it wasn't a matter of buying extra copies, he had to have a scribe hand copy it.

Dr. John Seehorn (10:51)

Oh, it's a big deal.

Tim Gray (10:52)

So that was a big investment for the emperor to do. And then later on, Alfred the Great does something similar, right?

Dr. John Seehorn (10:58)

That's right, yeah. Alfred the Great. If I had to make a list of figures in Christian history that I wish were better known, Alfred would be on there.

Tim Gray (11:05)

We'll have to do a show on Alfred.

Dr. John Seehorn (11:06)

Sometimes we will do a show on Alfred. Yeah. I mean, so kind of a similar thing. Alfred lives in an embattled time.

Tim Gray (11:12)

He's 300 years later than Gregory.

Dr. John Seehorn (11:16)

Yeah, about that. So, like mid ninth century. So in the eight hundreds. So he's a king in.

Tim Gray (11:26)

Saxon.

Dr. John Seehorn (11:27)

In southern. In southern England.

Unidentified Guest (11:28)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (11:29)

And at a time when they're under constant threat from Viking invasions, and he's even kind of having to hide out for various times in marshes and things like that. And yet he knows that it's not enough just to sort of save his kingdom politically, it's important to plant cultural seeds, spiritual seeds.

Unidentified Guest (11:51)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (11:51)

And so he has all these great Latin texts translated into Anglo Saxon, or what we know is Old English. Right. So that Anglo Saxon leaders can read them and be inspired by them. And the Pastoral Rule is one of them.

Tim Gray (12:06)

It's an extraordinary. I'm. Some of our viewers are probably saying, all right, so they got it to all the bishops in the Byzantium empire and ended up in England. We need to get it for all of our bishops today. It is powerful, and I hope and encourage anybody in leadership, whether a priest or bishop, to read this rule because it is extraordinary and it's inspiring. And even if you're not a priest or bishop. I know for me, I read it as my spiritual reading for a while and I found it very fruitful. So if anybody who has to lead, whether as a parent or in a business or whatever else, it's worth reading spiritually.

Dr. John Seehorn (12:44)

You know, Tim, I think just maybe providentially. This morning I was. We were at Adoration down the chapel and I was looking at Matthew, chapter 23 and Jesus. Really harsh words toward the scribes and the Pharisees. But I was really pondering the Lord's teaching not to call anyone rabbi, not to call anyone father, not to be called teachers or instructors, because we only have one. And it occurred to me that this really is the genius of Gregory's leadership that he was always so, just as you said, he was so cautious about vanity and about putting himself forward. And as a spiritual father, as a teacher, as a leader, as a ruler, he always wanted to be transparent to God's leadership, to God's teaching, to God's fatherhood.

Unidentified Guest (13:38)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (13:39)

And I think that, you know, going back to what you mentioned, Tim, his desire to retire from the world, he talks about this tension a lot, but I think it really creates a very powerful and fruitful tension.

Unidentified Guest (13:52)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (13:52)

Gregory came out of the monastery into a pastoral role that he didn't necessarily want. And it caused him to be very thoughtful about how to preach to the people. How do I bring, how do I mediate contemplation to people who are living active lives in the world? How do I maintain contemplation now as one who is forced to live an active life in the world? And so that tension. And in some ways, without wanting to be too negative toward Justinian, the Eastern emperor at the time of Gregory's birth, sometimes with my students, I'll sort of invite them to think about the contrast between Justinian and Gregory. Justinian absolutely understands himself as, like I said, a kind of architect.

Unidentified Guest (14:43)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (14:44)

And he's going to build, and he wants to build a Christian civilization, a Christian culture, but he's very, let's just say, hands on about it.

Unidentified Guest (14:51)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (14:52)

He sets these projects and they're going to get them done. And I don't see in Justinian, this. Justinian actually is. He's probably the best theologically educated emperor that the world has ever seen. There are a few later on who could rival him.

Tim Gray (15:10)

And I'll just say for a lot of people who have been to the Holy Land, if you've been to the Church of the Nativity, he reorientated that church and reworked it a bit. So you've seen some of the. If you've been in the ancient Church of Nativity that was redone and remodeled by the Emperor Justinian, so you see some of his handiwork again, what he was trying to do, build up Christianity in the empire.

Dr. John Seehorn (15:32)

Yes, spectacular achievements. But what I don't always see from Justinian is that kind of reflex to retreat to the cell. Right. To go back to the word of God, to go back to quiet, to contemplation, to meditation. And we do see that in Gregory. And, you know, Gregory actually gets an awful lot done as well. I mean, as Pope, he's still. He's making sure that the poor are fed every day and he's rebuilding Aqueduct, churches, aqueducts, all of this infrastructure after being so ravaged by war. And he's dealing with these incredible crises. At the time that he acceded to the papal throne, there was actually a terrible plague that was ravaging Rome.

Unidentified Guest (16:22)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (16:24)

All these crises, right?

Tim Gray (16:25)

That's right. Doesn't he do something about this plague? I mean, thinking of our sisters with COVID he has some procession or does some special. Yeah, you can read about the St. Mary majors, right? Is that what he does? He does.

Dr. John Seehorn (16:36)

Well, they do a procession. You can read about it in Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks. He talks about the rise of Gregory to the papacy and describes this procession and even gives us at least, you know, his version of the words of the sermon that Gregory preached on this occasion. And it's challenging reading.

Unidentified Guest (16:58)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (16:59)

Because he's not coddling his people.

Tim Gray (17:04)

That's right.

Dr. John Seehorn (17:04)

He's reminding them that physical illness is one thing, but the real malady, the real danger, is always spiritual sickness.

Tim Gray (17:14)

He's such a wise pastor, and I even, like, he even challenges. There's a certain ownership he takes. Like when he takes. He says, we need to repent. And so he calls everybody to repentance. And so, you know, he does this procession to Saint Mary Major's, this pilgrimage, internal to Rome, calling upon all of Rome to come and pray and do penance so that the plague would leave. And, you know, it's interesting because you don't see that so much today. I think, you know, a lot of Christians might say, well, maybe our ills are judgment. But even the fringes who say this is a divine judgment, they don't then do penance. Typically. This is what's meaningful about, I think the.

Dr. John Seehorn (18:00)

Well, they usually think it's someone else's sins.

Tim Gray (18:02)

Exactly. That's the problem, is we don't own it. And so Gregory owned it. I mean, this is what Daniel does. He's the model of this. Daniel trained in his baptism. Yep.

Unidentified Guest (18:14)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (18:14)

Identifying with sinners even though he's not a sinner. And John says, you should be baptizing me.

Unidentified Guest (18:19)

Right, right.

Dr. John Seehorn (18:20)

But how does he fulfill all righteousness? By identifying with the people of God.

Tim Gray (18:25)

With sinful Israel, taking on their penance.

Dr. John Seehorn (18:28)

Very powerful.

Tim Gray (18:29)

So Gregory is just a great insight there. Well, you know, one of the things that Gregory did is he was a great preacher of the word of God. You've mentioned John, that his love for scripture, and I love how you said it, that as a monk, he lives this contemplative life. And he was obviously had a deep study and educational background. But then when he's thrust into being pope and having to serve in a wider way, he uses the office of bishop because he sees himself as a bishop of Rome. He uses the office. He talks about this in the pastoral rule that as a bishop, you're supposed to preach and teach in imitation of Christ. That's one of the most important aspects of your office. And so you have the royal office of governing, but you also have the prophetic office of teaching as well as the priestly office. And he talks about the importance of preaching, but he lives that. So his homilies on Ezekiel, he's got many homilies. We've lost some of them. The ones, I guess, he did on the prophets and the earlier historical books, the Old Testament, unfortunately, we don't have anymore. But his homilies on Ezekiel are really powerful. And in Homily seven, he talks about Ezekiel's opening vision of this divine chariot and a wheel within a wheel. And he talks about the symbolism and meaning of that. And one of the things he says is that for the reader of Scripture, the reader of the Word of God, Scripture will expand as the reader grows, in other words. And he really suggests that Scripture, the meaning of Scripture, is infinite because it reflects the truth about God, who is infinite. And he's drawing on Origen, it would seem, And a couple of those things. I know that, you know, Henri Delubac talks about how Origen influenced Gregory. But this idea that you grow, your reading of Scripture expands as your own spiritual life expands.

Dr. John Seehorn (20:25)

Yeah, you know, Gregory is really interesting in this regard because we kind of skipped over this part a little bit in his life. I mean, maybe we alluded to it briefly, but after Gregory had been in the monastery for about five years, he was called out by the Pope. He was ordained a deacon, and he was sent to Constantinople as the Pope's permanent emissary there. And while he was there, he did live with other kind of Italian monks in the Latin quarter of the city. But we know that he was also exposed to a lot of the Greek Fathers and to Greek monasticism and things like that. And so in many ways, he fits right in with the Greek Fathers. And yet there's also a very deep Augustinian current to his thought. And that image, actually of Scripture growing with its reader comes right out of the Confessions, Book three.

Unidentified Guest (21:19)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (21:20)

That we have to make ourselves small in order to conform ourselves to the humility of our Lord that's on display in the Scriptures. But then it's sort of like what G.K. chesterton said about the church.

Unidentified Guest (21:34)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (21:34)

That it's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Unidentified Guest (21:38)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (21:40)

And yeah, there's a wonderful line, Tim. Oh, and I do want to have a shout out to origen. We have 14 of Origen's homilies on Ezekiel that have come down to us in Latin translation. So certainly Gregory was deeply influenced by those. They'd been translated by Jerome and had been preserved in that form. But your comment about Scripture growing reminds me of one of, I think justly, the most famous quotations from Gregory, which is actually in a kind of introductory letter at the beginning of his moralia on Job, which by the way is so thorough and so amazing that when St. Thomas Aquinas sets out to comment on Job, he says, I'm only going to give a literal explanation of job because St. Gregory has already said everything that can be said about the moral sense, which is just stunning for Aquinas. Aquinas said, there's nothing for me to do here.

Tim Gray (22:34)

Exactly.

Dr. John Seehorn (22:34)

Why he must have done a good job.

Tim Gray (22:36)

Yes, indeed.

Dr. John Seehorn (22:36)

But he says that he's talking about Scripture and how God feeds us with Scripture and it's really beautiful. And then he says scripture is like a river that is both shallow and deep. And he said that Scripture is. It's shallow enough that a lamb can safely wade in it.

Unidentified Guest (22:54)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (22:54)

And so in other words, no matter where you're starting, if you think I don't know anything about the Bible, I'm afraid I'll get confused. I'm not sure where to start. It's okay. It's okay.

Unidentified Guest (23:04)

Right?

Dr. John Seehorn (23:04)

Get into God's word. Even the beginner, right. Which he's representing here as a lamb can stand safely in the stream. And yet, and yet as you grow, the water gets deeper and deeper. And so he says, not only can a lamb stand in it safely, but an elephant can swim freely in it.

Tim Gray (23:24)

I love that quote. And it's just, it's so beautiful because he's captured by the depth and breadth of the Word of God. And like Augustine, as you mentioned, you know, Augustine loved the Word of God. And the reason he loved it so much is that it was the way to hear God speak normally in their regular day to day prayer life and to learn about God. And there's a depth to Scripture because there's a depth to God. And I think that's what Gregory is alluding to in that seventh homily on Ezekiel is that you can't reach. All right, I've done Scripture. I know that I've mastered It. No one can, because it's about God and it's God's word. And so not only does it last forever, but its depth is beyond anything that we can ever plumb with the human mind. So it's really extraordinary. And he really nourished himself on that word of God consistently. And I want to go back to this tension between the active life and the contemplative life, because I think all of us in the world who aren't monks and religious, we struggle with this, right? We have to navigate, we have to make decisions, we have to deal with the world.

Dr. John Seehorn (24:34)

Maybe you do, but I've perfected it.

Tim Gray (24:37)

Well, the teacher says that.

Dr. John Seehorn (24:39)

No, we all do. We all do. And Gregory did, right? Gregory did not say, hey, guys, I found the formula. I've got just the right way to balance this. And that's why I talked really about that creative tension.

Unidentified Guest (24:51)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (24:52)

He thinks that we shouldn't, of course, we shouldn't be satisfied, right. Until we're actually satisfied with the very.

Tim Gray (24:59)

Vision of God, that great tension that we, I guess, if we have that tension with living the active life and prayer life, that we're right in the struggle. Right. With Gregory. And I'm always struck as having led something small, like the Augustine suit, which has grown bigger than I ever thought it would. He talks about the. The burden of office and responsibility. And I think all of us, I think the greatest burden, though, is the burden of souls. And I think we as parents have that burden. To be responsible for our children, our family, is a great burden. And he talks about the weight of that, but how we have to keep giving that back to God for him to guide us.

Dr. John Seehorn (25:42)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Tim Gray (25:45)

What else should we talk about with Gregory?

Dr. John Seehorn (25:47)

Well, you know, two other things that kind of occur to me, Tim, that I think we could talk about. One is just, you know, sometimes people will talk about Charlemagne, the great Frankish ruler, the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

Tim Gray (26:01)

Yeah. They kind of think of him as.

Dr. John Seehorn (26:02)

The founder of Europe, as the father of Europe. And I want to make a case that really it should be Gregory.

Unidentified Guest (26:09)

Wow.

Dr. John Seehorn (26:09)

And, you know, the reason I say is because we mentioned that Gregory spent all his time in Constantinople and he is always in contact. He doesn't want to lose touch with the Eastern Empire, with the Church there, with the emperor, anything like that. But on the other hand, he's also looking west and he's looking north. And I think it's a really important thing he did.

Unidentified Guest (26:30)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (26:31)

In Spain, you've got a Visigothic kingdom, the Visigoths were a group of barbarians who kind of moved through Europe, sacking Rome along the way in the 4th and 5th centuries and wound up in Spain. They'd been Arian Christians until near the end of the 6th century, but they'd become Catholic. And so Gregory is kind of establishing closer relations with them. So you think about all the richness of medieval Spain, the centuries of the Reconquista, all those wonderful cultural riches that come out of the Mosarabic liturgy, all those things. So it's foundational and we're so closely linked with it because of Gregory.

Unidentified Guest (27:07)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (27:08)

Looking north, there were Christians in England and in the British Isles, but really after the Romans left, they were kind of abandoned and they'd suffered all these invasions from the Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes. This is then why we talk about Anglo Saxon England. And those were all pagans. So Christians in the British Isles had been largely kind of cut off from everyone else. And so Gregory sends missionaries to go and Christianize the pagans, but also to re. Establish a close relationship with the Christians in the British Isles.

Tim Gray (27:42)

Yeah. And of course, he's going to send Augustine.

Dr. John Seehorn (27:44)

Augustine of Canterbury.

Tim Gray (27:45)

Augustine of Canterbury. Different from Augustine.

Dr. John Seehorn (27:47)

Different Augustine, but different. St. Augustine.

Tim Gray (27:49)

Yeah, but Augustine of Canterbury, which will be so foundational for the faith in England and then later on.

Dr. John Seehorn (27:55)

Absolutely.

Tim Gray (27:56)

Even Ireland, they'll have influence there too. Of course, Patrick will have his say.

Dr. John Seehorn (28:01)

But that's earlier.

Tim Gray (28:02)

Yeah, Patrick's earlier. Yeah. But the English. What I'm just saying is that even with Augustine bringing it, they're going to try to pull the Irish back to the liturgical calendar.

Dr. John Seehorn (28:10)

Yeah. So it takes a while, but by the end of the seventh century, things are looking pretty good.

Tim Gray (28:15)

But again, this is Gregory the Great and has a tremendous influence. I mean, we didn't even talk about Augustine of Canterbury as one of the big things he did.

Dr. John Seehorn (28:21)

We'll have to save that for another time.

Tim Gray (28:22)

Yeah, but he's a visionary. He sends him out.

Dr. John Seehorn (28:25)

Well, you know, one last point that occurs to me, Tim, I think is really important is it's really tempting for us to always think the grass is greener on the other side.

Unidentified Guest (28:34)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (28:34)

And we can think that as believers. If only I lived in this time. If only I lived in this place. And Augustine. Sorry, Gregory actually wrote a series of dialogues about Italian saints, the most famous of which is St. Benedict of Nursia. This is actually how we know about The Life of St. Benedict is because of book two of Gregory's dialogues. But he wrote that for Christians in Italy who looked around and said, what a mess, right? God's not working here. He's not performing miracles like he does in other places. Maybe he's abandoned us. And Gregory felt like it was so important then to collect these stories of Italian saints.

Unidentified Guest (29:14)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (29:14)

And this we can kind of come back full circle to St. John Paul II.

Unidentified Guest (29:18)

Right.

Dr. John Seehorn (29:19)

Another great pope who wanted us to know holiness is real, the Holy Spirit is real, and he is active and he is just as powerful now as he was in the first century, the second century, the third century, the fourth century. And he can raise up saints today. And he has raised up saints today. And he wants each of us to be one of those saints.

Tim Gray (29:41)

Wow. You know, that gives us a lot of hope because I think that so many people today feel like, wow, the church has got its own struggles and the world has these great struggles. But that's as we know history and as you know, church history. The world is oftentimes in crisis, and so is the church oftentimes in need of reform. And so when we see these different moments, we pray that God will give us leadership and saints like St. Gregory the Great. And so we need those in our day, like St. John Paul II and many others. Well, I want to thank you for joining us on a special thanks to everybody who's been supporting us through the mission circle. We added almost 3,000 people in the month of August, so I'm so grateful for all of you who've joined. You make this happen, and we're very grateful. God bless you.

Narrator (30:30)

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