Commemorated January 25 (New Calendar) February 7 (Old Calendar)
The Church also keeps him on January 30 (New Calendar) February 12 (Old Calendar), with Saints Basil the Great and John Chrysostom.
The Latin Church keeps him on January 2. Older Latin books also kept May 9.
Saint Gregory was born near Nazianzus in Cappadocia, the son of Gregory and Nonna. His mother asked him of God and promised him to God before he was conceived. He delayed baptism after the custom of that age. He kept his virginity. He was the friend of Basil. He was made archbishop of Constantinople, then left the throne and went home. He reposed in 389.
What the Reading Keeps
The memory records the household and the road. It does not keep a long contest of spoken answers.
His father had been an Hypsistarian: a pagan father and a Jewish mother. Nonna was a Christian from her parents. She taught her husband and prayed for him until he dreamed the psalm, “Let us go into the house of the Lord.” She took him to Leontius of Caesarea, who was passing through Nazianzus on the way to Nicaea, and Leontius baptized him. That Gregory later became bishop of the same city.
Nonna asked for a son as Hannah asked for Samuel. She saw his face and his name before the birth. They named him Gregory after his father. They did not baptize him at once. The custom then was to wait toward the years of Christ. The reading says he himself, with Basil and Gregory of Nyssa, later helped to end that custom.
He hated games and shows. He set himself to keep virginity to the end. In youth he dreamed two maidens in plain white, faces veiled, who named themselves Purity and Chastity and rose into heaven like birds.
After him Nonna bore Caesarius and Gorgonia.
He studied first in Caesarea of Palestine under the rhetor Thespesius, then in Alexandria, then sailed for Athens on an Aeginetan ship among pagans. Off Samos a storm rose. The others wept for the body. Gregory wept because he was still only a catechumen. He remembered the Red Sea and Jonah. His parents, shown the danger in sleep, prayed in Nazianzus. The sea went still. A companion dreamed that Nonna came over the water, took the sinking ship, and brought it to shore. The ship believed in Gregory’s God.
In Athens he and Basil kept one house, one table, one mind. Julian, later the apostate emperor, studied there at the same time.The reading names him patriarch of Constantinople. After the fight over the see he left the city and returned to his own country. He was buried at Nazianzus.
Who stood with them
Nonna was his mother. She was a Christian from her parents. She brought her husband to the faith. The elder Gregory had been an Hypsistarian; Leontius of Caesarea baptized him on the way to Nicaea, and the father later became bishop of Nazianzus. Caesarius was his brother. Gorgonia was his sister. Basil shared one house and one table with him in Athens. Julian studied there at the same time. The two maidens in white are kept in this reading as Purity and Chastity.
He was asked of God before he had a name, and he would not spend the life that had been asked for on a throne that cost the peace of the Church.
We ask his prayers when a man is pressed to keep an office, and when the mouth that can speak of God is tempted to speak for itself.
Pray for us
Troparion, Tone 1
“The sweet-sounding shepherd’s pipe of your theology overpowered the trumpeting of the orators; for having searched the depths of the Spirit, eloquence was also bestowed upon you. Pray to Christ God, Father Gregory, that our souls may be saved.”
Kontakion, Tone 3
“By words of theology you unraveled the complex webs of the orators, glorious Gregory, and adorned the Church with the robe of Orthodoxy woven from on high. Wearing it, she cries out with us, her children: Rejoice, O Father, supreme mind of theology.”
The hymns of the second feast, January 30, are those of the Three Hierarchs.
Troparion — Tone 1
“Let us who love their words come together, honoring with hymns, the three greatest luminaries of the Three-Sunned divinity: / Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, together with the renowned John Chrysostom, of golden speech. / They have illumined the entire world with the rays of divine doctrines; / they are sweetly-flowing rivers of wisdom, / who with divine knowledge have watered all of creation with clear streams; / for they always intercede with the Trinity for us.”
Kontakion — Tone 2
“O Lord, You have received the Holy and God-proclaiming heralds, the crown of Your Teachers, / for the enjoyment of Your good things and for repose; / for You have accepted their sufferings and labors above every sacrifice, / for You alone glorify Your Saints.”
Saint Gregory, pray for us.
Sources
St. Demetrius of Rostov, Lives of the Saints, January 25. https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Dmitrij_Rostovskij/zhitija-svjatykh/86
Orthodox Library of Holy Fathers and Church Writers: Saint Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzus)
https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Grigorij_Bogoslov
Orthodox Church in America, Saint Gregory the Theologian, Archbishop of Constantinople. https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2026/01/25/100298-saint-gregory-the-theologian-archbishop-of-constantinople
Orthodox Church in America, Synaxis of the Ecumenical Teachers and Hierarchs: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom. https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2026/01/30/100350-synaxis-of-the-ecumenical-teachers-and-hierarchs-basil-the-great
Orthodox Encyclopedia, Григорий Богослов. https://www.pravenc.ru/text/166811.html
Orthodox Encyclopedia, calendar: 7 февраля (25 января). https://pravenc.ru/calendar/2026/02/07.html
Orthodox Encyclopedia, calendar: 12 февраля (30 января). https://pravenc.ru/calendar/2026/02/12.html
Also in the Latin books
Catholic Encyclopedia, St. Gregory of Nazianzus. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07010b.htm
Vatican News, Sts. Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzus, 2 January. https://www.vaticannews.va/en/saints/01/02/sts–basil-the-great-and–gregory-nazianzus–bishops-and-doctors.html
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Updated 09/2026