Righteous Nonna, Mother of Gregory the Theologian (+374)
Righteous Nonna, the mother of Gregory the Theologian, was born and brought up in a Christian family. Her parents, Philtatius and Gorgonia, brought her up in the Christian spirit. When the time came, her mother and father gave the maiden in marriage to Gregory, a rich landowner who had estates in Arianzus and Nazianzus. Spiritually the marriage proved hard for the God-fearing woman, since her husband was a pagan. The pious Nonna fervently besought God to convert Gregory to the true faith. Her son, Gregory the Theologian, writes: “She could not calmly bear being joined to God with one half of herself while the other half stood apart. She wished the bodily union to be joined by a spiritual union too. Therefore day and night, with fasting and tears, she besought God to save her husband.”
Through Saint Nonna’s prayer God sent Gregory a vision in his sleep, after which he came to the First Ecumenical Council held in Nicaea and confessed his conversion to the true faith. Having set out on the way of salvation, Gregory was first ordained priest, and then the episcopal see of Nazianzus was entrusted to him as well. At his consecration as bishop Saint Nonna too was ordained deaconess.
In the last years of her life many trials fell upon Saint Nonna. In 368 her younger son Caesarius died, a young man of brilliant promise. The following year her daughter died too.
Gregory the Theologian writes: “My mother was always strong and vigorous, and all her life she never felt infirmity, but at last illness came upon her. Not to prolong my account, of her many sufferings I will name the heaviest, which lasted for many days and could not be cured by any medicine. How then did God nourish her? He neither sent her manna, as once to Israel, nor split a rock so that water might flow for thirsty men, nor fed her by ravens, as Elijah, nor by the hand of a holy prophet, as once Daniel, thrown into the pit and tormented with hunger. How, then? It seemed to her that I, whom she especially loved (even in her sleep she preferred no one to me), suddenly appeared to her at night. In my hands was a basket of wonderfully white loaves. Then I said a prayer, signed the bread with the cross according to our custom, and gave it to her to taste, by which I strengthened her and restored her strength. This night vision was to her something truly real, for from that time she came to herself and took on the look of one who has hope. What had happened to her was revealed clearly and distinctly. When I went in to her early in the morning, I at once noticed the improvement in her condition. Then, as was my custom, I asked her how she had spent the night and whether she needed anything. She answered me quickly and sweetly: ‘Beloved child, thou thyself didst feed me, and now thou askest after my health?! How good and kind thou art!’ The maidservants signed to me not to contradict her, not to receive her words coldly, and not to drive her to despair by revealing the truth.”
In 374 Bishop Gregory (commemorated 1 January) died at the age of a hundred. After her husband’s death Saint Nonna hardly ever left the church, where she commended her soul to the Lord during prayer on 5 August 374.
