GREGORY OF NANZIANUS: Solitude and Engagement

In 361 A.D., a newly ordained priest fled from his parish; wrestling between his desire to live a life of solitude with God and feeling the call of God to stay in the flurry of congregational life.

Gregory the Theologian spent several months in seclusion, struggling over God's call to leave a monastic life of contemplation and return to the turbulent world of caring for God's people and defending orthodox doctrine.

Although committed to times of solitude, he consistently chose to come out of isolation and shepherd the early church amidst conflict and doctrinal debates.

In John 17:15, Jesus prayed for his disciples saying, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.”

The Christian lives in a constant tension of two worlds. One is the call to live a rich, inner life of intimate fellowship with God while at the same time influencing a complex, chaotic and often-times hostile culture.

Gregory’s lifelong struggle to live in and yet not be of the world, left an example of a contemplative activist who desired to, “live above the visible .. by always having divine images in the mind .. and to be and unceasingly become, an untainted mirror of God and of the divine.”