St. Gregory the Great, Gregarious Magnus PP I, Doctor Eccl.

Position: Pope and teacher of the Church.

Deaths: 604

Patron: down; singers, musicians, choral and choral singing students, masons; invoked against the bottom and against the plague

Attributes: dove, poor, book, Christ (z at whose side a stream of blood rises into the chalice), liturgy, pen, veil, tiara; also depicted with a figure emerging from purgatory

BIOGRAPHY

He came from a Roman patrician family. He became a prefect, but gave up the advantageous office and great possessions to follow Christ as a monk. However, he was called to the See of Peter, and from it, he very successfully managed the Church despite numerous difficulties. Plague, hunger, Lombard troops raged, discipline fell, the Gospel had to be spread to new missions, and his body was plagued by disease. With all this Gregory I, servant of the servants, and above all the Holy Spirit, with whose help he fought and won. He left many letters and writings, including numerous liturgical texts that featured a reform of church singing, of which the most famous is the “Gregorian chant.” His most important work is for priests, “Pastoral Rules. “

POPE OF GREAT HEART

He was born around 540 in Rome to the important patrician family of Gordian, of the House of Alicia and Sylvia, who owned a large estate in Sicily. However, this family is a testimony that even the rich have a difficult path to God’s kingdom (see Mt 19:23), but it is possible for them too. The martyrology mentions the memory of Sylvia, mother of Gregory I, on November 3.

Gregory had extraordinary talents and unusual abilities. After his university studies, which also included law, he was offered a promising future. Education, although it was Christian, led him down a worldly path. He worked in the civil administration and, at about 30 years of age, became prefect of the city of Rome (“prefects Urbis “), holding the highest civic position. In this regard, as well as in worldly pleasures, he did not revel, and already in 573-4 (after his father’s death), he exchanged his office for the path of spiritual life, as prescribed in the Gospel.

He transformed his father’s house on Monte Coelia into a monastery dedicated to St. Andrew. He founded seven monasteries, including one devoted to St. Andrew, on his extensive Sicilian estates. Likewise, he sold and gave away many of the inherited properties to people experiencing poverty. Two of my father’s sisters had previously lived a rigorous life in their own house, and even Gregory’s mother, Sylvie, chose a monastic life after her husband’s death.

It is assumed that Gregory became a Benedictine monk, although there are only indirect documents, such as information on the adoption of Benedictine principles and cooperation with the Benedictines. After a relatively short monastic life, under the leadership of Abbot Hilario and Valentin, Gregory was called by the Pope to serve as his assistant. He was ordained as a deacon by him. Pope Pelagius II, as his apocrisiary (ambassador), was sent (already in 580) to Constantinople, where he remained in service until. 586. He established many friendships, met the emperor’s family and numerous bishops, and gained experience. After returning to Rome, he also lived in his monastery as the Pope’s secretary. Although it took a three-year truce with the Lombards, Rome howled. After a terrible flood, a famine ensued, and subsequently, a plague broke out, similar to the spotted typhus (luesinguinária). Among the first victims was Pope Pelagius II, born in 590. They say that everyone immediately thought about Řehoř as his successor, but he didn’t. To be sure, he wrote to the emperor not to confirm his choice. However, the city prefect seized the letter and altered its contents, thereby securing imperial confirmation of the election. Gregory also attempted to escape, but eventually recognized his place.

We can already see how much the good of the Church and the country lay at Gregory’s heart from the fact that, at the end of August 590, he organized supplication processions to avert the plague and issued regulations in connection with them, which fell exclusively within the Pope’s competence. At the same time, during the interregnum, such decision-making was the responsibility of the Roman archpriest, along with two other representatives. Gregory issued guidelines for individual districts, of which under the leadership of parish priests, groups of designated estates (opaths with religious, abbess with religious women, men with young men, widows with virgins, all children..) in processions singing penitent psalms and calling “Kyrie Ellison” came from the designated churches in seven streams to the Basilica of Our Lady of the Snows. During the procession that turned on the bridge in front of Hadrian’s monument to St. Peter, the archangel Michael was allegedly seen hiding a sword as a sign of the end of the plague. The name Angel Castle was created as a memorial. The second monument was the annual holding of supplication processions on the feast of St. Mark.

Another amicable act, which, after St. Gregory, has survived, is the so-called Gregorian masses. Gregory, when he learned that several ducats had been found in the possession of a Monk Just of his monastery, making the monk gravely guilty of violating the vow of poverty and the principles of the monastery, he had thirty Masses of St. celebrated for him for thirty consecutive days. For the last time, the soul of Just, who could not be buried in a sacred place for wrongdoing, appeared in the heavenly glow. By doing so, he allegedly announced his release from purgatory to his native brother Kapis. The way to help the soul in purgatory during the 30 days of sacrifices, involving the same number of Holy Masses, was later recognized by the Church (S. congr. Indulge. Of March 15, 1884). Gregorian masses can only be for one soul without including another intention for another.