Abbot and Doctor of the Church, monk and poet of Armenia · Feast: 27 February
Open in the Daily Word app“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Psalm 51:17
Gregory was born around 950 in the region of Lake Van in historic Armenia, now in eastern Turkey. His mother died when he was small. His father Khosrov, a learned man who wrote a commentary on the Armenian liturgy, became a bishop after her death. Gregory and his brother were entrusted to a relative, Anania, the founder and teacher of the monastery of Narek, on the southern shore of the lake.
He spent almost his whole life at Narek as monk, priest and teacher. It was a time of great flowering for Armenian learning and art under the local princes of Vaspurakan. While still a young man he wrote a commentary on the Song of Songs, and he also composed hymns, odes and a work on the holy cross of Aparank, along with a panegyric on the Blessed Virgin Mary.
His greatest work is the Book of Lamentations, which Armenians often call simply the Narek. It is made up of ninety-five prayers, each described as a speaking with God from the depths of the heart. Gregory stands before God as the worst of sinners, speaks for all humanity, and places his whole hope in the mercy of Christ. Armenian Christians have treasured it for a thousand years, and many have kept a copy in the home and read it beside the sick.
He died around the year 1003 and was buried at Narek. Armenians honour him as a saint and a great poet. St John Paul II praised his writing on Mary in his encyclical of 1987, Redemptoris Mater. On 12 April 2015, at a Mass in St Peter's Basilica marking the hundredth year since the massacres of the Armenian people, Pope Francis proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church. In 2021 his memorial was added to the General Roman Calendar on 27 February.
He hid nothing from God, not even the worst of himself.
The depth of his sorrow is always met by trust in Christ.
He took the sins of all humanity into his own prayer.
His poetry leads the reader to worship.
For centuries Armenian families have kept the Narek in the home. Many have read its prayers over the sick and treated the book itself with great reverence.
A popular Armenian story tells that visitors sent to test him, because he was suspected of error, were served roasted doves on a day of fasting. When they objected, Gregory told the birds to fly, and they rose from the dish alive.
In Armenia in 2016 Pope Francis quoted from the eighty-third prayer of the Narek, where Gregory asks God not to destroy those who persecute him but to change them, a prayer the Pope offered to a people who had suffered so greatly.
The voice of a wailing heart, its sighs and its cries, I offer up to you, O seer of secrets.
St Gregory of Narek, Book of Lamentations, Prayer 1, in substance
Do not destroy those who persecute me, but change them; root out the evil ways of this earth, and plant the good ones in me and in them.
St Gregory of Narek, Book of Lamentations, Prayer 83, in substance
God does not turn away the heart that is sorry (Psalm 51:17).
Gregory stands before God with all of humanity.
Change them, Lord, and change me.
Dear friends, far from Rome, on the shore of a lake in Armenia, a monk wrote prayers that people still read after a thousand years. St Gregory of Narek gave us a book of ninety-five prayers, which he described as speaking with God from the depths of the heart. That is what prayer is, and many of us have rarely dared to pray that way.
Gregory says plainly that he is a sinner. There is no pretending in him. In this season of Lent the psalm says what he says: God does not despise a broken and contrite heart (Psalm 51:17). Sometimes our prayers are polite and careful. We tell God what we think he would like to hear. Gregory teaches us to tell God the truth, and to trust that mercy is greater than any truth we can tell about ourselves.
He goes further still. He does not pray only for himself. He stands before God with the whole human race and takes its sins on his own lips. He even prays for those who persecute him, asking God not to destroy them but to change them, and to plant good things in them and in himself. Those words come from a people who have known terrible suffering.
Today, as we come to this Holy Mass / Holy Qurbana, let us bring what we have been hiding from God. Let us pray for one person who has hurt us. And let us thank God for the Armenian people, whose faith has been tested by so much suffering, and ask St Gregory to teach us to pray from the heart. Amen.
O God, who gave St Gregory of Narek the gift of speaking with you from the depths of his heart, grant us through his prayers true sorrow for our sins and unshaken hope in your mercy, and teach us to pray for all people, even our enemies. Amen.