Basilian Order of Saint Josaphat 
Saint Basil the Great: A Model of Following the Word of God
At the beginning of the year, both the Eastern Church (January 1) and the Western Church (January 2) commemorate Saint Basil the Great. Called a Father of the Church, he is praised in the liturgical hymns as a radiant lamp and an ornament of the Church. One of his greatest contributions is that he was a careful listener to the Word of God. Because of this, he interpreted Sacred Scripture deeply and drew from it a powerful message about the meaning of life and the world — a message that still speaks to hearts today.
A Calling to a Life of Sacrifice
Saint Basil the Great was born around 329 in Caesarea of Cappadocia (present-day Turkey). His father was a lawyer and rhetorician, and his grandfather died a martyr during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian. In his childhood, it was his grandmother Macrina who helped plant in him a love for Christ. Remarkably, his grandmother, his mother Emilia, his sister Macrina, and his brothers Gregory (of Nyssa) and Peter (of Sebaste) are all recognized by the Church as saints.
Besides his hometown, Basil studied in Constantinople, and later in Athens, the cultural capital of the Greek world. In 355 he returned from his studies and began teaching rhetoric, but soon realized that this was not where his heart belonged. After proper preparation, he received the Sacrament of Baptism and decided to dedicate his whole life to God. Inspired by the growing monastic movement, he traveled to Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia to learn from monks, study their asceticism, and observe their way of life.
In his early ascetic years, Basil spent much time in silence, prayer, and reflection — which led him to develop a vision of monasticism based on community life(cenobitic), as opposed to solitary desert living (anchoritic). In the seventh response of his Long Rules, he explains why life in community is higher and more beneficial than life in solitude. Through his writings and example, Saint Basil entered Church history as the legislator of Eastern communal monastic life. Pope John Paul II speaks of this in his Apostolic Letter Patres Ecclesiae.
In 370, Basil became Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. His ministry was marked by intense pastoral care, theological work, and literary activity. Besides founding hospitals and caring for the poor, he strengthened the Church’s liturgical and prayer life. He was also a courageous defender of orthodox faith, especially against those who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit and the true Godhead of Jesus Christ.
A Life-Giving Force for the Church
In reading Basil’s many homilies, letters, and writings, we find a defining feature of his thought: deep reverence for the Word of God as the supreme authority of the Church. This is visible not only in his constant use of Scripture, but above all in the spiritual wisdom with which he interprets it.
“What belongs to faith?” he writes. “Unshakable confidence in the truth of the God-inspired words, which no reasoning, no appearance of piety, and no laws of nature can overturn. What belongs to the believer? To be fully convinced of the power of the words spoken, to dare neither to subtract nor to add anything to them. For whatever is not from faith is sin, as the Apostle says (Romans 14:23). For faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word of God. Therefore, anything not found in God-inspired Scripture is not from faith — and is sin.”[1]
Basil seeks to transmit God’s Word in all its purity, depth, and spiritual fire. Alongside his intellectual gifts, he relies constantly on prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit, so that the Word may become living and active in the present. He examines each word of Scripture as a jeweler examines a diamond — so that others may see its brilliance.
This reflects the general approach of the Fathers of the Church: “For the Fathers, Sacred Scripture was the object of unquestioned veneration, the foundation of faith, the constant subject of preaching, the nourishment of piety, and the soul of theology. They defended its divine origin, its authority, its unchanging truth, and its inexhaustible spiritual power.”[2]
The Word of God Forms the People of God
According to Saint Basil, no one has the right to add to or take away from the Word of God. The duty of those in authority in the Church is to be guided by the Word and to remind the faithful of its demands. He saw the crisis of his time as rooted in a departure from Scripture. When the Church ceases to be formed by the Word, the Christian ideal grows cold among both clergy and laity, and the result is division, conflict, and loss of unity.
Basil warns against turning the faith into human opinion — or presenting one’s own ideas as though they were God’s Word. He challenges us to ask whether the Church risks losing her mission when she puts first ideas or methods not rooted in Scripture.
For Basil, the path of faith is obedience to the will of God as revealed in His Word. Through contemplation and study of Scripture, the People of God are gradually liberated from merely human thinking, and step by step align their lives with the Gospel — where we encounter Jesus Christ, the eternal Word made flesh.
If this does not happen, Basil says, the Church becomes either cold and lifeless, or suffocating and oppressive — because it ceases to live from the life-giving sap of the Gospel.
That is why the Church still needs the witness of Saint Basil and the other Fathers: they teach us to return again and again to Scripture as the source of theology, spirituality, and pastoral life.
True reverence and obedience to the Gospel give the Church the ability to look honestly at herself — to avoid replacing the Gospel with human ideologies, and also to prevent the Gospel from being manipulated for personal or political purposes.
Sacred Scripture – Food for Faith
Because Sacred Scripture is not always immediately clear to everyone, there arises the need for interpretation — for opening the Word to others so that it does not remain hidden. Saint Basil speaks about this in his Commentary on the Prophet Isaiah. In chapter eight, he warns against the attitude of the teachers of the law who, as Jesus said, “took away the key of knowledge” — not only failing to enter themselves, but preventing others from entering as well (see Luke 11:52).
Commenting on this Gospel passage, Basil explains that in order to “untie the knot” of misunderstanding Scripture, one needs practice in the Law of God, constant reflection on the Word. Instead, the teachers of the law clung only to the literal meaning and could not penetrate the deeper mystery of Scripture — the mystery announcing the coming of the Messiah. As a result, they did not believe in Jesus Christ, and so, as the prophet says, “the Lord hid His face from the house of Jacob”(see Isaiah 8:17).[3]
This warning is not only for the Pharisees, but for every member of the Church — especially bishops and priests. When a Christian fails to read, meditate on, and follow the Word of God, the essential truths of the faith begin to be replaced. Christian witness is reduced to a rigid observance of commandments as a list of rules, and faith becomes overshadowed by church politics or ideology — forces that slowly destroy the Church from within.
Pope Francis often points out these dangers. In one of his homilies at the Casa Santa Marta, reflecting on the very passage cited by St. Basil (Luke 11:47–54), he said that Christians who “take the key of knowledge” but do not enter are those who lack witness. When faith does not express itself in lived testimony, it deforms: it becomes an ideology that pushes people away and distances the Church from the world.
This happens, the Pope said, when a Christian stops praying. Without prayer, the doors of faith remain shut, and one’s “witness” becomes proud, self-seeking, or self-promoting. The only remedy is prayer — the key that opens the door to faith, makes humility possible, and allows us to help others find the path to God.[4]
In this light, St. Basil teaches that both prayer and faith require knowledge of the faith— knowledge that comes from God’s revealed Word, above all in Scripture. Faith is not simply personal opinion; it is a shared life within the Church, lived in harmony with her teaching and sustained by the witness of believers. For this reason, any theological idea not grounded in Scripture must be considered false and rejected as something that opposes the knowledge of God.[5]
The Word That Reveals the Face of God
Saint Basil, by his life and writings, teaches us the primacy of the Word of God in the Church. For him, Sacred Scripture is the written Word of the living God. It does not belong to the past — it speaks today, because God continues to speak through it.
At the heart of Scripture is God’s desire to enter into communion with humanity. Through His Word, God opens His heart and reveals His plan; He shows His face, offers His friendship, and invites us to share life with Him through His Son, Jesus Christ — the Word made flesh.
But this Word also calls us to read it, hear it, receive it, and proclaim it — remembering that it is God Himself who speaks to us here and now.
Saint Basil also warns against an individualistic approach to Scripture. The Word of God is given to us to build the unity of the Church. It is addressed to each person personally, but always within the living Tradition of the Church. That is why it is essential to read and hear Scripture together with the great witnesses of faith — from the early Fathers to the saints of today — and in harmony with the teaching authority of the Church.
Hieromonk Yakiv Shumylo, OSBM
[1] ВАСИЛІЙ ВЕЛИКИЙ, Морально-аскетичні твори, Свічадо, Львів 2006, 136-137.
[2] CONGREGAZIONE PER L’EDUCAZIONE CATTOLICA, Istruzione sullo studio dei Padri della Chiesa nella formazione sacerdotale, in Enchiridion Vaticanum. Documenti ufficiali della Santa Sede, vol. 11, EDB, Bologna 2001, 26.
[3] cf. J.-P. MIGNE (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Graeca, vol. 30, Paris, 1857-1866, 491.
[4] cf. PAPA FRANCESCO, Discepoli di Cristo non dell’ideologia, in URL: < https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/cotidie/2013/documents/papa-francesco-cotidie_20131017_discepoli-di-cristo.html > (in 29/12/2024).
[5] F. PILLONI, Teologia come sapienza della fede. Teologia e filosofia nella crisi ariana del IV secolo, EDB, Bologna 2003, 92-96.
