Pope St. Gregory I the Great
Who was he? Why was he great?
According to Webster dictionary the word great means (conspicuously large or important, vast, numerous, extreme, long continued, notable, renowned, and magnificent). One would be under the impression that all of these words describe Pope St. Gregory I the great. Pope St. Gregory I the Great was born about 540. He was born into a very wealthy family. In other words he did not earn his money he was born into it.
Gregory's father's name was Gordianus and his mother's name was Silvia. Gordianus was a wealthy aristocrat of noble birth. Gordianus also had two sisters Tarsilla and Emilians who were designated as saints. He owned large estates in Sicily and a mansion on the Caelian Hill of Rome. Little is known about St. Gregory's mother other than she was from a good family. She is also honored as a saint. One would think that he was raised by nothing but saints because it seems that his entire family was saints.
There is not much known about St. Gregory's early years. Because his father was a senator it appeared at first that Gregory was destined for politics. There were quite a few disasters in his early years when Rome was fighting with the Goths and the Narses. He began to study the bible early and practiced Christianity from childhood through his adulthood. He enjoyed meditating and listening to his elder's conversations. His memory and mind were unusually good, therefore he was able to hold and contain a lot of information. It is thought that this is where he got his ideas that the world would come to an end soon.
He was a person that lived in the real world at a time when the political state was terrible. He was a high achiever so he had a lot of status and contacts in his worldly life be ...