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“Christ was pierced with nails in vain!” (Gr. God.). We drew a full cup from the spiritual creations of St. Gregory of Nazianzus provided life-saving instructions on our issue, and yet we cannot say that we have exhausted their content to the bottom. And is it even possible to completely exhaust this deep well of both speculative theology and practical guidance? Christians of all confessions have been drawing from it for fifteen centuries, for rarely any other saint. Father's creations were loved so much and so many interpretations were written on them, as on the creations of St. Gregory the Theologian. They draw upon, learn from and bow before the greatness of his pastoral spirit. His thoughts are eternally new and eternally young, the flights of his brilliant mind are eternally fresh and captivating, extremely successfully combining natural, cultural and grace-filled gifts. A young Christian feeling, a touching burning of the heart about the glory of God, high theological and speculative concepts - all this was wonderfully combined in a wonderful man and was imprinted in his creations. The dimensions of place and time force us to divert our greedy lips from this treasure trove and look at our work. All stages of the life’s feat of St. passed before us in succession. father and all the discoveries of his pastoral ministry. We saw the future great shepherd greedily collecting the necessary flowers of human genius from the fields of classical paganism and diligently growing them in the new fields of young Christian science. We witnessed his touching and instructive struggle in choosing between two directions in life. We saw him as a co-shepherd with his father, and then as a shepherd of a small flock. We followed with interest an exceptional moment in the life not only of him, but of the entire church history - the struggle of a pastor rich in ideals, but poor in material means, in the noisy Byzantine capital - a struggle that ended in the moral victory of truth and truth over lies and man-pleasing. We saw St. father, who indulge not in rest, but in continuous work in the field of poetic creativity and who continue to fight the enemies of the Church personally, and with the help of ink. We set out the ideal he outlined for the shepherd and pastoral activity and settled on a gloomy picture of the moral shortcomings of the clergy of that time. This picture is difficult. If we treat it even critically, if we take into account St.’s own remark. father that he cannot contain his bile and ask him to generously bear the caustic word he said as the fruit of his grief 1196; if, finally, we agree with Ullman that something else is put here for decoration 1197: then, nevertheless, we must admit that most of its characteristic everyday features are still taken from life, bears the stamp of reality, not fiction, and that, therefore, the morals of the clergy of that time were terribly corrupted. The indignation of St. is quite understandable. father, an ascetic pastor, who saw all the inconsistency of the spiritual leaders with their ideal, who was aware of all the harm and shame for the Church of such a phenomenon, deeply grieved about this, fought worldwide against this vice of the pastorate of that time and, finally, admitted that such a struggle was beyond his strength 1198. How much bitterness had to accumulate in his soul in order to allow himself to cry filled with despair: “In vain Christ was pierced with nails!” 1199. We think that we will correctly understand the thought and intention of St. father, if we admit that by branding the vicious clergy of his time with his caustic sarcasms, he had in mind not only a polemical, but also a moral and pedagogical goal - one in which, with a vivid depiction of vices, he would protect all subsequent shepherds from shameful shortcomings and thereby keep them at their proper height. And he achieves his goal. The bitter laughter of his satyr through all centuries has reached and continues to reach the hearts of shepherds, and cannot help but touch them both with the truthfulness and vitality of the image, and with his holy zeal for their due holiness. It reaches, touches, excites and produces a beneficial revolution in mood, in thoughts, gives rise to the determination to beware of imprinted bad images and constantly direct your leading pastoral boat on a straight path to the goal, without going astray and without dragging your flock along with you onto the wrong path, therefore, every shepherd who wants to warm up his pastoral zeal will find in works of St. father necessary instructions and instructions. God grant that every shepherd, as often as possible, from time to time, compares his pastoral deeds with the ideal bequeathed by St. father, as with a mirror, humbly recognizing his human weakness and prayerfully turning for help to the Chief Shepherd, to appeal to Whom for St. Gregory for us to study the works of St. Gregory of Nazianzus brought benefits in the sense that if we corrected some things in our own pastoral ministry, changed others, improved others and reintroduced others, then we would be satisfied with the achieved results of our work and could boldly say: “No, Christ was not pierced with nails in vain!”