Feast of St. Gregory the Great

 

Today is September 3rd, a day when every American gets the day off from work to celebrate the Feast of St. Pope Gregory the Great (540AD -604AD). St. Gregory is one of the first Doctors of the Church (along with St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Augustine).

So what made him so great? The list is too long to get into here, but you can go to the article in the Catholic Encyclopedia for more information (I've quoted from the article below). Mainly his influence is felt in the "doctrine, the organization, and the discipline of the Catholic Church". Like St. Augustine, his mother (Silvia) is also a saint. He's had two aunts (Tarsilla and Emillliana) who also became saints. The pre-meal prayer at Thanksgiving must have been interesting...

Anyway, Gregory wrote "Liber Pastoralis Curea" which if written today would probably be called "The Idiot's Guide to Being a Bishop".

"The work, which regards the bishop pre-eminently as the physician of souls, is divided into four parts.

* He points out in the first that only one skilled already as a physician of the soul is fitted to undertake the "supreme rule" of the episcopate.
* In the second he describes how the bishop's life should be ordered from a spiritual point of view;
* in the third, how he ought to teach and admonish those under him,
* and in the fourth how, in spite of his good works, he ought to bear in mind his own weakness, since the better his work the greater the danger of falling through self-confidence.

This little work is the key to Gregory's life as pope, for what he preached he practiced."

St. Gregory is the Patron Saint of Teachers.