Righteous Nonna, Mother of Saint Gregory the Theologian

On this day, August 5 according to the Julian Calendar (August 18 civil calendar), the Georgian Orthodox Church commemorates the Righteous Nonna, mother of Saint Gregory the Theologian.

The Righteous Nonna, mother of Saint Gregory the Theologian, was born and raised in a Christian family. Her parents, Philtatius and Gorgonia, brought her up in the Christian spirit. When the time came, her father and mother gave the maiden in marriage to a wealthy landowner named Gregory, who had estates in Arianzus and Nazianzus. From a spiritual point of view the marriage proved a heavy burden for the God-fearing woman, for her husband was a pagan. The pious Nonna fervently entreated God to turn Gregory to the true faith.

Her son, Saint Gregory the Theologian, writes: „She could not bear calmly that she should be joined to God with one half and estranged with the other. She desired that the bond of the flesh should be joined by a bond of the spirit. Therefore day and night, with fasting and with tears, she besought God to deliver her husband.“

Through the prayers of Saint Nonna, God sent Gregory a vision in his sleep, after which he went to the First Ecumenical Council held at Nicaea and confessed his conversion to the true faith. He was first ordained a presbyter, and afterward the episcopal see of Nazianzus was entrusted to him. At the time of his consecration as bishop, Saint Nonna was ordained a deaconess.

In the last years of her life many trials befell Saint Nonna. In 368 her younger son Caesarius died, a young man who gave promise of a brilliant future. The following year her daughter also departed this life.

Saint Gregory the Theologian writes: „My mother was always firm and courageous; throughout her whole life she never felt infirmity, but at last illness came upon her. That my account may not grow long, out of many sufferings I shall name the heaviest, which continued for many days and could be healed by no medicine. How then did God nourish her? He sent her no manna, as once to Israel; He clove no rock that water might flow for thirsting men; He fed her not by ravens, as He fed Elijah, nor by the hand of a holy prophet, as He once fed Daniel, cast into the pit and worn out with hunger. How then?

„It seemed to her that I, whom she loved above all — for even in sleep she preferred no one to me — appeared to her unexpectedly by night. In my hands I held a basket of wondrous white loaves. Then I said a prayer, signed the bread with the Cross according to the custom received among us, and offered it to her to taste, and by this I strengthened her and restored her powers. This nocturnal vision was for her something truly real, for from that time she came to herself and her face took on a look of hope. What had happened to her was made plain and manifest.

„When I came to her early in the morning, I at once noticed the improvement in her condition. Then, as was my custom, I asked how she had passed the night and whether she needed anything. She answered me readily and sweetly: ‘My beloved child, you yourself have fed me, and now you ask after my health! How kind and gentle you are!’ The servants signaled to me not to contradict her, not to receive her words with indifference, and not to cast her into despair by disclosing the truth.“

In the year 374 Bishop Gregory reposed at the age of one hundred (commemorated January 1). After her husband’s death Saint Nonna almost never left the church, and there, at the time of prayer, she gave up her soul to the Lord on the fifth of August in the year 374.