And the day of the death of the great universal teacher and saint Gregory the Theologian, January 25, 389, whose memory has survived sixteen centuries, will not remind us all that one day this hour of death, known to all, but unknown to anyone, will come to us.

And then how will our evil conscience be justified before the All-Searching Judge? And when we compare our life with the life of Gregory the Theologian and our faith with his faith, will not the repentant sigh of the publican be slow to burst out of the very depths of our hearts: "O God, be merciful to me a sinner" (Luke 18:13).

How can we not remember on this day the celebration of the icon "Assuage My Sorrows" in memory of the great beneficence of the Mother of God, manifested by many miracles to the people of God in Russia in 1771 during the terrible calamity of the plague and our sorrows, which to this day quench our sorrows.

Three events are of different times, but all three confirm one thing: human life proceeds in the flow of God's Providence, and the Creator has a wondrous care for His creation. The Lord teaches, edifying us by His word of the Gospel, and by the life of His chosen ones, and by the decisive intrusion into human life of God's grace by the power of miracles.

Now we live in vain, we have no attention to see in our lives the traces of God's Providence, we do not have the understanding to understand what the Lord wants from us in the circumstances of life given to us.

And all this is because we forget about the only purpose of earthly existence, that it is only the path to eternity. We forget and often become impudent atheists, opponents of God's decrees about us, not accepting the immutable truth that the only feat of the cross in a person's life is his path to salvation – to blessed eternity. Only narrow and strait gates lead to the Kingdom of Heaven.

But the door of Divine mercy is always open, from the beginning to the end of the world. But how can we open the door of the petrified human heart to meet God, we must learn this, we must think about it.

Let us now speak about all this on the example of the Way of the Cross in the life of the great universal teacher and St. Gregory the Theologian. And let us be attentive, my dear, for I am sure that the richness of the saint's life will grant each of us what he needs.

The future Saint Gregory was born in the year 328 in Greece in the family of a noble family: an Orthodox Christian, Nonna's mother, and a pagan, Father Gregory. The mother, deeply and sincerely devoted to the will of God, obediently going through the trial sent to her – the unbelief of her husband – combined a tense spiritual life with a practical, active life. Praying for her loved ones, she strengthened her prayer with the power of her mercy, and the result of her labors was not slow to appear.

The saint's father not only believed in Christ and accepted Holy Baptism, but soon became first a presbyter, and later a bishop of Nazian. And how many tears and labors such a transfiguration of her husband cost the righteous Nonna, only God knows.

Her son afterwards, remembering his mother with grateful love, wrote: "My mother, having inherited the holy faith from her fathers, put this golden chain on her children. In a woman's body, carrying a courageous heart, she only touched the ground ... so that through this life we may prepare for the heavenly life..." And the crown of Nonna's life is her husband, who became a bishop, her son Gregory, a great universal teacher, saint and theologian, and her son Caesarius, a physician who reached great heights in the art of medicine, but who considered it his highest happiness and blessing to be an Orthodox Christian; and Nonna's daughter Gorgonia repeated in many features the life of her pious mother. St. Nonna left nothing to the world except living monuments – her children, which she carried, and St. Gregory to this day brings to the world, her motherly labors, invisible to anyone.

And is it not to today's mothers that the example of the life of the God-loving St. Nonna is addressed, for the main task of a wife-mother, blessed by God by nature, is to be a true Christian mother, because in her children always lies the future of the world.

When Gregory learned to read, he received from his mother's hands a gift of the book of life – the Holy Scriptures. At the same time, the mother reveals to the child the secret of his birth and at the same time gives a parental will for life. "Fulfill my motherly desire," said Nonna, "remember that I begged you of the Lord, and now I pray that you may be perfect..."

Subsequently, Gregory was amazed at his election all his life. "Christ vouchsafed me the preeminent glory. At first He gave me as a gift to my mother, who prayed from the depths of her heart, and He Himself (the Lord) received me as a gift from my parents, and then by a night vision He instilled in me a love for a chaste life," wrote St. Gregory.