gather: St. Gregory the Great
Fertilizing the Church
St. Gregory did every day so great alms that many in the country about were nourished by him…
Jacobus de Voragine, excerpt from the Golden Legend (1275), translated by William Caxton (1483)
For the past few years, I’ve hosted a Liturgical Life group. We’re a diverse gathering - of all ages, from a variety of denominations, learning alongside each other and working to graft the traditions of the liturgical calendar into our own varied circumstances.
One of our favorite annual traditions - a huge marker in the year for us - is when we let the cattle out of the barn in the spring. They’ve spent their winter months in a raised barn (above flood levels), eating hay and staying safe from the high water.
Those cold barn-months are a lot of work, but they also provide a respite that preserves the cattle as well as the pastures through the quintessential Pacific Northwest winter.
This time of year, though, the cows can smell the grass and sense the shift in daylight - they’re ready to go out, and so are we. Sometimes, though, the weather forces us to pivot.
As the feast of St. Gregory the Great approached, the weather predictions looked wetter and wetter. Since we often let the herd out of the barn around St. Gregory’s feast, I thought that inviting our liturgical life group into the process would be especially meaningful…but even the old crop fields were just too saturated to hold up to all those hooves.
So, we pivoted: to manure. Charming, right?
Challenging though it may be, the herd’s winter months in the barn have a sunny side: their manure is the humble, unsung hero of the farm. It provides the infrastructure of fertility that supports everything we grow here…a silent framework that helps everything else on the farm flourish.
I’m reminded of how St. Gregory the Great referred to himself as the “servant of the servants of God” - a humble facilitator, he was devoted to supporting and reforming the Church.
Though this connection, at first glance, may seem a bit rough…bear with me: old symbolic calendars - representing feasts with images - depicted the feast of St. Gregory with an image of the manuring of fields.1
His feast, like his life, was tied to fertility: quietly focused on nourishment, on the aid of growth.
Would you join me as we look back at some photos and sweet moments from our community’s feast of St. Gregory the Great?