3 September 2020 – St Gregory the Great

We were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.
So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God
but also our own selves,
because you have become very dear to us.
From 1 Thessalonians 2: 2-8 (NRSV)

The words of St Paul written to the people of Thessalonika could also have been adopted by St Gregory whose feast we mark today. He was elected as pope towards the end of the sixth century as Europe emerged from the downfall of the Roman Empire and began to establish new cultures. Gregory is famous for an encounter he had with fair-haired, blue-eyed children being sold in the slave market and asked where they had come from. When he was told that they were Angles (from around modern-day Germany), he announced that they were not Angles but angels. The experience clearly marked him as, when he was elected pope, he sent missionaries to the northen lands, including to what is now England. His letters to those he sent out were full of pastoral advice about treating people with gentleness and offering them first of all spiritual milk. He asked them to model themselves on him, calling himself the “servant of the servants of God”.

• • What do Paul and Gregory seem to have in common?
  • Which works best you – gentleness and “spiritual milk” or “hell-fire and damnation”? 

Pray today for those who continue the missionary work of Paul, Gregory and countless others – that their gentleness and offering of spiritual milk will draw people to Christ.