Timeless Christians

Basil the Great

Although he came from a Christian family--his grandparents had suffered dreadfully under Maximinian's persecution--Basil still had to make his own decision to follow Christ. An older sister convinced him to give up his worldly ambitions and embrace whole-hearted service for Christ. Basil listened and the result is that he became Basil the Great.

Born in 329 at Caesarea in Cappadocia, Basil studied there, in Constantinople, and in Athens. Among his student friends were Julian, the future emperor (who later turned on him) and Gregory Nazianzen, who became a bishop and stood side by side with Basil in his struggles for the glory of Christ's name.

When Basil returned home from school, he "awakened out of a deep sleep" and decided to become a hermit. He sought the best examples of holy men that he could find. But although he was strict with his body, he never renounced beauty. When he retired from the world, it was to a scenic place with woods and mountains, pure air, cool breezes and beautiful flowers. He spent five years there and developed his innovative ideas for monastic communities. His rule, like that of Benedict later, combined active industry, study, and arts, with regular prayers, hymns, and psalms. His hardworking monks turned desert tracts into productive land.

Basil himself practiced rigid asceticism. He had just one outer and one inner garment; he slept in a hair shirt on the ground; he took little sleep, and no baths; the sun was his fire, his food bread and water, his drink the running stream. These practices were unwise and ruined his health, making him miserable in later years. In fact, he died prematurely, at the age of fifty.

Meanwhile, many followers came to him, impressed by his strict life. He established several monasteries for them and set them to work erecting and operating hospitals for the poor, houses of refuge for virgins, and orphanages.

Basil engaged in the controversies over Christ's divinity, always taking the side of the orthodox and upholding Christ against the Arians and the Semi-Arians. This led him to collisions with Christless bishops, governors, and emperors. He even alienated his good friend Gregory of Nazianzen by forcing him into a situation for which he was unsuited. His influence was enormous and political leaders tried to force him to parrot their views. Threatened with confiscation, exile, tortures, and death Basil answered that these were powerless over one whose sole wealth was a ragged cloak and a few books, to whom the whole earth was a place of pilgrimage, whose feeble body could endure no tortures beyond the first stroke, and to whom death would be a mercy, as it would transport him to God sooner.

Basil's faith was practical. For example, when the region of Cappadocia was desolated by drought and famine, he devoted his whole energy to helping poor sufferers. He sold a property he had inherited, and also raised a large subscription in the city. He personally tended the sick and and lepers with his own hands. He set up soup lines for the starving, and while he fed their bodies he nourished their souls with the bread of life.

He cleaned up church corruption in the areas under his influence. To reduce Arian influence he appointed fresh bishops. He preached not only at Caesarea and the big cities, but in country villages. He arranged forms of prayer and established night services in which the psalms were chanted by alternate choirs.

After seeing a restoration of orthodoxy, Basil died. He breathed his last with the words "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit." His funeral was attended by enormous crowds, who thronged to touch the bier or the hem of his funeral garments, or even to catch a distant glimpse of his face. The press was so great that several persons were crushed to death. Even Jews and pagans joined in the lamentations, and it was with some difficulty that the coffin bearers preserved their sacred burden from being torn to pieces by those who were eager to secure a relic of the departed saint. He was buried in his father's tomb. Because he left everything he owned and devoted himself to the work of Christ, Basil will never be forgotten.

excerpted and adapted by Dan Graves from a public domain article of Rev. Canon R. J. Knowling, D.D.