Final Burial at St. Peter’s
Those remains now rest in a fitter place. St. Chrysostom, in words quoted further on, when dilating as a fervent lover of St. Paul upon his praise, cried out: ‘Rome, for this do I love, although having reason otherwise to praise her, both for her size, and her antiquity, and her beauty, and her multitude, and her power, and her wealth, and her victories in war. But passing by all these things, for this I count her blessed: because, when alive, Paul wrote to them, and loved them so much, and went and conversed with them, and there finished his life. Wherefore the city is on that account more remarkable than for all other things together, and like a great and strong body, it has two shining eyes—the bodies of these saints. Not so bright is the heaven when the sun sends forth his beams, as is the city of the Romans sending forth everywhere over the world these two lights. Thence shall Paul, thence shall Peter, be caught up. Think, and tremble, what a sight shall Rome behold, when Paul suddenly rises from that resting-place with Peter, and is carried up to meet the Lord. What a rose doth Rome offer to Christ! with what two garlands is that city crowned! with what golden fetters is she girdled! what fountains does she possess! Therefore do I admire that city, not for the multitude of its gold, nor for its columns, nor for its other splendours, but for these, the pillars of the Church.’
The body, therefore, of him who spoke these words, while a preacher at Antioch, rests more fitly than in any other place amid that matchless group of apostles, saints, and martyrs which surrounds the body of the Fisherman, in the central shrine of Christendom. There he awaits the sight which he anticipated with so much joy.
I must notice one more fact of the eight great brethren, the chief doctors of the East and West. St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and himself, all suffered persecution; the life of St. Athanasius was for years in danger from the bitter hatred of the emperor Constantius, and the emperor Valens would have destroyed St. Basil, had he dared. But to Chrysostom alone was given actually to lay down his life itself for justice’ sake, and to follow St. John the Baptist not only in sanctity of life and preaching the cross of Christ, but in his death through the persecution of a woman, and the blinded tyranny of a king devoted to her will.