Today is the Feast of St Basil and St Gregory. St Francis de Sales speaks of St Gregory in his Introduction to the Devout Life:
” St. Gregory Nazianzen tells his flock, how, walking along the seashore, he watched the waves as they washed up shells and sea weeds, and all manner of small substances, which seemed, as it were, rejected by the sea, until a return wave would often wash part thereof back again; while the rocks remained firm and immoveable, let the waves beat against them ever so fiercely. And then the Saint went on to reflect that feeble hearts let themselves be carried hither and thither by the varying waves of sorrow or consolation, as the case might be,like the shells upon the seashore, while those of a nobler mold abide firm and immoveable amid every storm;—whence he breaks out into David’s cry, “Lord, save me, for the waters are gone over my soul; deliver me from the great deep, all Thy waves and storms are gone over me;” for he was himself then in trouble by reason of the ungodly usurpation of his See by Maximus.”