Saint John Chrysostom

A son of Antioch

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John was born around the year 347 in Antioch, one of the great cities of the Roman East and a cradle of early Christianity — it was here, the Book of Acts tells us, that the disciples were first called Christians. His father, a high-ranking military officer, died while John was still an infant, and the boy was raised by his mother Anthusa, a widow of only twenty who refused to remarry and devoted herself entirely to her son. Her piety left so deep an impression that even the pagan teacher of rhetoric who trained John, the famous Libanius, is said to have exclaimed in admiration, “What women these Christians have!”

John received the finest education the age could offer, studying under Libanius and mastering the rhetoric and philosophy that would later make his preaching unforgettable. For a time it seemed he would become a brilliant lawyer or imperial official. But the words of Scripture and the example of holy men drew him in another direction. He was baptized in his early twenties and soon resolved to give himself wholly to God.

The desert and the ruin of his health

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Hungry for the ascetic life, John withdrew to the mountains outside Antioch and lived among the hermits there. For some four years he submitted to a rigorous discipline of prayer and study, and then spent two more years entirely alone in a cave, where — by his own later account — he did not lie down to sleep for two years, committing the whole of the Scriptures to memory. The extreme cold, fasting, and sleeplessness permanently damaged his stomach and kidneys. His broken health eventually forced him back to the city, but he carried out of the wilderness a mastery of the Bible and a habit of prayer that would feed his preaching for the rest of his life.

Deacon, priest, and golden-mouthed preacher

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Back in Antioch, John was ordained a deacon in 381 and a priest in 386. For the next twelve years he preached in the great church of Antioch, and it was here that he became, quite simply, the most beloved preacher in the Christian world. His sermons were clear, vivid, fearless, and practical — he expounded whole books of Scripture verse by verse, and he never hesitated to apply the Gospel directly to the lives of his hearers, rich and poor alike. The people would interrupt him with applause; he, in turn, rebuked them for applauding instead of repenting.

When riots broke out in Antioch in 387 and the citizens, terrified of the Emperor’s vengeance, awaited punishment, it was the priest John who steadied the whole city with his famous series of sermons “On the Statues,” calming panic and calling the people to repentance. It was the grateful generations that followed who gave him the name by which the Church has known him ever since: Chrysostomos, “Golden-Mouthed.”

“Preaching improves me. When I begin to speak, weariness disappears; when I begin to teach, fatigue too is gone.”St. John Chrysostom

Archbishop of Constantinople

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In 398, against his own wishes, John was taken — almost by stealth, to prevent the people of Antioch from resisting — to the imperial capital and consecrated Archbishop of Constantinople. He brought the same uncompromising spirit to the highest church office in the East. He slashed the lavish budget of the archbishop’s household and spent the savings on hospitals and the poor. He disciplined corrupt clergy, preached against the greed and vanity of the wealthy, and lived with monastic simplicity in the midst of a court that loved splendor.

This made him powerful enemies. His honesty offended the worldly clergy he reformed, and above all it offended the Empress Eudoxia, who took his sermons against luxury and injustice as personal attacks. Allied with Theophilus, the ambitious Archbishop of Alexandria, John’s opponents convened a rigged council in 403 — the so-called “Synod of the Oak” — which condemned him on absurd charges and secured his banishment.

Exile and “Glory to God for all things”

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The night John was led away, the people rose in his defense, and an earthquake shook the city; the frightened Empress had him recalled almost at once. But the reconciliation did not last. Within months John again denounced the excesses of the court, and in 404 he was deposed and exiled a second time — first to remote Cucusus in the mountains of Armenia, and then, when even from exile his letters kept the loyalty of his flock alive, to the far edge of the Empire on the Black Sea.

He never arrived. Driven on foot through brutal weather by guards under orders to break him, the sick old man collapsed at Comana in Pontus on September 14, 407. Sensing the end, he asked to be vested in white, received Holy Communion, and died with the words that summed up his whole life: “Glory to God for all things.” Thirty-one years later his relics were carried back in triumph to Constantinople, and the Emperor Theodosius II publicly begged forgiveness for the sin of his parents against the saint.

What he left the Church

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No other Father of the early Church left so vast a body of sermons and commentaries, and few have shaped Orthodox worship so deeply. The Divine Liturgy celebrated on most days of the year in Orthodox churches throughout the world bears his name — the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom. His homilies on Genesis, the Psalms, Matthew, John, and the epistles of Saint Paul are still read and treasured, and his treatise “On the Priesthood” remains a spiritual classic on the awesome responsibility of the pastor.

Above all, John Chrysostom teaches by example that the Gospel must be preached without fear and lived without compromise. He cared for the poor as though they were Christ Himself, he refused to flatter the powerful, and he bore exile and death without bitterness. Together with Saint Basil the Great and Saint Gregory the Theologian he is honored as one of the Three Holy Hierarchs, the great teachers who set the pattern for all Christian pastors who came after them.

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