The New Year festivities may be over, but Christmastide is still underway. January 2 marks the Ninth Day of Christmas, commemorating two of the great Doctors of the Church.

Saint Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea, and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, Patriarch of Constantinople, were towering figures of the Patristic era. Both hailed from Cappadocia in Asia Minor, a region that remained ethnically and culturally Greek at the time, long before the arrival of the Turks. They are especially revered in Eastern Orthodoxy, where, together with Saint John Chrysostom, they are celebrated as the Three Holy Hierarchs. However, Orthodox Christians do not celebrate them today, as they do not observe the same calendar as Western Christians.

The two share January 2 as a feast day in the Western calendar—notably, they lived before the Great Schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy—partly because of their deep friendship: St. Basil ordained St. Gregory as a bishop, and after St. Basil’s death, St. Gregory delivered a funeral oration in his honor.

Their theological writings, though often challenging for laymen, continue to be an essential study for serious scholars of theology more than seventeen hundred years later. Both were unwavering champions of Nicene Christianity in the face of Arianism—the heresy whose founder, Arius, famously received a slap from Saint Nicholas. Arius and his supporters rejected the Trinity as understood today, viewing the Son as a created being. St. Basil and St. Gregory vigorously upheld both the full divinity and full humanity of Christ, while also defending the Holy Spirit’s equal place within the Godhead against those who diminished Him.

The bishops’ legacy extends far beyond doctrine. St. Basil, in particular, was a pioneering philanthropist who founded almshouses, hospitals, hospices, orphanages, and soup kitchens. He is said to have donated his entire personal fortune to these efforts, creating a vast complex of charitable facilities outside his city, known as the Basiliad.

Thus, the Ninth Day of Christmas offers not only an opportunity to explore theology and deepen your faith, but also serves as a reminder of the command to treat others as we wish to be treated.

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