Today is the Feast of St Basil the Great, one of the awesome 4th-century Doctors of the Church. Monks love him for his contributions to the monastic life: St Benedict stood in awe of him. He was a powerful and influential bishop of Caesarea in Pontus: when the emperor sent his prefect Modestus to chastise him, he reduced Modestus to stammering vagueness, and when the prefect complained of being spoken to like that, Basil said crisply, "You seem never to have met a bishop." He was a giant of theology, who wrote a classic work on the Holy Spirit ; and he was a passionate, poetical character who wrote the following in praise of psalms:
"A psalm implies serenity of soul; it is the author of peace, which calms bewildering and seething thoughts. For, it softens the wrath of the soul, and what is unbridled it chastens. A psalm forms friendships, unites those separated, conciliates those at enmity. Who, indeed, can still consider as an enemy him with whom he has uttered the same prayer to God?
So that psalmody, bringing about choral singing, a bond, as it were, toward unity, and joining the people into a harmonious union of one choir, produces also the greatest of blessings, charity. A psalm is a city of refuge from the demons, a means of inducing help from the angels, a weapon in fears by night, a rest from toils by day, a safeguard for infants, an adornment for those at the height of their vigor, a consolation for the elders, a most fitting ornament for women.
It peoples the solitudes; it rids the market place of excesses; it is the elementary exposition of beginners, the improvement of those advancing, the solid support of the perfect, the voice of the Church. It brightens the feast days; it creates a sorrow which is in accordance with God.
For a psalm is the work of angels, a heavenly institution, the spiritual incense."
The illustration is an icon from the Cathedral of St Sophia in Kiev, Ukraine
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