St. Gregory the Great

Two days after St. Giles’s quiet forest feast, the calendar turns to a very different September saint. St. Gregory the Great is remembered on September 3. He died on March 12, 604, and the East still marks that date. In the West the memorial was moved to September 3 so it would not fall in Lent—the day he was consecrated pope in 590.

If Giles is the hermit who hid, Gregory is the monk who could not hide. Rome dragged him out of the cloister and set him on Peter’s chair while the city was dying of plague.

 A noble who wanted a cell

Gregory was born in Rome around 540, into a family that already knew both the Senate and the altar. His father Gordianus served as prefect of the city. His mother Silvia is venerated as a saint, as are two aunts. A great-great-grandfather had been Pope Felix III.

He received the education of a late-Roman aristocrat and rose, as his father had, to become prefect of Rome—the highest civil office left in a city that was no longer the capital of an empire. Then he walked away. He sold estates, founded six monasteries in Sicily and one in his family villa on the Caelian Hill, and became a monk. Later he would say those years of “silence of the heart” were the happiest of his life.

The Church did not leave him there. Pope Pelagius II ordained him deacon and sent him as papal ambassador to Constantinople. He kept a monastic rhythm at the imperial court for six years, then came home to his monastery. In 590 the plague took Pelagius. Clergy, people, and Senate chose Gregory. He tried to refuse. Tradition says he even tried to flee. He was consecrated anyway—on September 3.

He was the first monk to become pope.

 A city of famine, Lombards, and fever

The Rome he inherited was a ruin with a famous name. The Western Empire was gone. Lombards pressed from the north. Grain failed. Plague emptied streets. The emperor in Constantinople was far away and often unhelpful.

Gregory did what a prefect would do and what a monk would do at the same time. He organized food for the poor from the Church’s estates. He ransomed captives. He negotiated with Lombard dukes when the imperial army would not come. He emptied treasuries to keep people alive. Romans later called him consul Dei—God’s consul—and “Father of the City.”

He also took a title that every pope after him has used: Servant of the Servants of God. It was not decoration. For Gregory, office was a burden accepted for other people’s souls.

 The pastor who wrote the job description

His most lasting book is the Regula Pastoralis—the Pastoral Rule. Written at the start of his pontificate, it tells bishops how to live and how to preach: not one sermon for every hearer, but different medicine for the proud and the timid, the rich and the poor, the young and the old. Medieval Europe treated it as a manual for anyone who had charge of souls. Kings kept copies. Bishops were examined on it.

He also wrote the Moralia on Job, homilies on the Gospels and Ezekiel, hundreds of letters, and the Dialogues, which preserved the memory of St. Benedict for the West. He is one of the four traditional Latin Doctors of the Church.

Artists show a dove at his ear because a secretary’s legend said the Holy Spirit dictated his words on Ezekiel. The image is a claim about his work: the Church remembered him not only as an administrator, but as a man who listened before he spoke.

 Chant, England, and the shape of worship

“Gregorian chant” bears his name. He did not invent plainchant from nothing, but he reformed and organized the Roman liturgy so thoroughly that later centuries attached the music to him. He is patron of musicians, singers, choirs, teachers, and students for that reason—and because he believed worship should form the soul, not merely decorate the hour.

He is also, in a real sense, a patron of England. Seeing fair-haired Anglo-Saxon boys in a Roman market, he is said to have punned, Non Angli, sed angeli—not Angles, but angels. In 596 he sent Augustine of Canterbury and a band of monks from his own community to preach to the English. The mission took root. English Christians never forgot the pope who sent it.

 How to keep September 3

Gregory’s day is a feast for people who did not want the job and did it anyway.

A simple way to mark it:

- Pray for pastors, teachers, and public servants who are tired and still responsible.  

- Listen to a piece of Gregorian chant—not as museum music, but as the sound of a Church trying to pray with one voice.  

- Read a short passage from the Pastoral Rule if you lead anyone: a classroom, a household, a parish, a team. Gregory’s test is blunt. Desire for power disqualifies. Love of the flock does not.

He suffered from chronic illness in his last years, likely gout and the aftereffects of austerity. He kept writing and giving. One of his final recorded kindnesses was sending a warm cloak to a poor bishop who felt the cold. He died on March 12, 604, and was buried at St. Peter’s. The people did not wait for a formal process. They called him the Great.

Giles teaches the holiness of refuge. Gregory teaches the holiness of being fetched from refuge when the city is on fire. September holds both: the hermit in the thicket, and the monk who became, against his will, the shepherd of a broken Rome.

St. Gregory the Great, pope and doctor, servant of the servants of God, pray for those who lead, those who sing, and those who would rather pray in silence than sit in the chair.