Die 28 Novembris, 1888.
CONTENTS.
Preface.—St. John Chrysostom. page [Birth and Parentage,] 1 [Named Preacher at Antioch,] 3 [Archbishop of Constantinople,] 5 [State of Constantinople,] 7 [Enmity of Eudoxia,] 9 [Synod of the Oak,] 10 [Exile at Kucusus,] 11 [Judgment of Pope Innocent I.,] 12 [Comana,] 13 [His Death,] 14 [Translation of his Body,] 15 [Final Burial at St. Peter’s,] 16 [Summary of his Works,] 17 PART I.
THE KING’S HIGHWAY. [1. The Way, the Truth, and the Life,] 23 [2. Who is the Greater?] 26 [3. The First are Last and the Last First,] 29 [4. Variety of Human Lot,] 34 [5. Whence the Rich?] 38 [6. The Rich Young Man,] 41 [7. Different Kinds of Friendship,] 46 [8. The Buyers and Sellers in the Temple,] 49 [9. The Voice of Good Deeds,] 51 [10. The Best Controversy,] 55 [11. The Tongue a Royal Power,] 63 [12. Golden Vessels and Golden Hearts,] 66 [13. True Almsgiving,] 70 [14. I was hungry and you gave Me to eat,] 73 [15. The Archetype and the Type,] 77 [16. The Weak Things of God,] 83 [17. The Secret of our Faith,] 94 [18. The Victory of our Faith,] 100 [19. Marriages as they were and as they are,] 105 [20. ‘Use a little Wine,’] 109 [21. Possessing the Land,] 118 [22. The Word of Praise,] 125 [23. Sufferings of the Just,] 130 [24. The Folly of the Cross,] 141 [25. The Abode of the Humble,] 148 [26. The Prisoner of Jesus Christ,] 152 [27. The Seed not vivified unless it dies,] 157 [28. The Resurrection in Creation,] 163 [29. Resurrection confirmed by Signs which followed,] 169 PART II.
THE KING’S HOUSE. [1. ‘Thou art Peter,’] 183 [2. ‘Peter rose up,’] 188 [3. Built upon the Rock,] 189 [4. The Priest a Man, not an Angel,] 193 [5. The Authority of the Priest,] 198 [6. The Priest a Shepherd of Souls,] 204 [7. One Sacrifice,] 212 [8. The New Pasch,] 217 [9. The ‘Eyes of Rome,’] 221 [10. ‘This is My Body,’] 228 [11. The Union of the Holy Eucharist,] 237 [12. Bone of our Bone, Flesh of our Flesh,] 241 [13. Remembrance of the Dead,] 248 [14. The Departed at the Sacred Mysteries,] 252 [15. The Tombs of the Martyrs,] 256 [16. The Bodies of the Martyrs,] 259 [17. The Tombs of the Servants,] 266 PART III.
PERSONAL. [1. Letter to Pope Innocent, A.D. 404,] 272 [2. Letter to some Imprisoned Bishops and Priests (404),] 282 [3. To the Priests and Monks Nicholas, Theodotus, &c. (405),] 283 [4. To some Priests and Monks in Phœnicia (405),] 284 [5. To Studius the Prefect of the City, on the Death of his Brother (404),] 286 [6. To Malchus on the Death of his Daughter,] 288 [7. To Olympias. The Virginal Life,] 288 [8. To Olympias. The Blessedness of Suffering,] 290 [9. To Olympias (406),] 293 [10. To Pœanius. ‘Glory be to God in all things,’] 295 [11. Vanity of Vanities] 296
ERRATA.
Page 16, for “surrounded” read surrounds.
Page 21, for “Nirockl” read Nirschl.
{These are corrected in this electronic edition.}
ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM.
Birth and Parentage
John of Antioch was born about the year 347, of a noble family. His father, Secundus, held a high rank in the imperial army; he died early, and left a very young widow, in the bloom of age and beauty, and amply endowed with wealth. Many suitors sought to obtain the hand of St. Anthusa. She remained faithful to the memory of her husband, and devoted to the education of her only son. She brought him up in all the knowledge of the age and in strict piety, which she enforced by her example. St. Anthusa, amid all the perils of Antioch, guarded her son John with the same care which her contemporary, St. Monica, bestowed in the small circle of an African town on her Augustine. She was happier in one thing. The heathen charms of Antioch exerted no such power over her son John as the like seductive beauty of Carthage exerted over the young Augustine. The prayers and the care of St. Monica and St. Anthusa were equally zealous. In the one case, after the most terrible fall, lasting over a period of at least fourteen years, the African mother had the unspeakable joy of seeing her son’s mind delivered from the most dangerous heresy of the day, and was allowed to die in the arms of the new-born Christian, who could share all her hopes of eternal life, which are recorded in the beautiful dialogue between mother and son preserved for us by that son, who was to be the greatest doctor of the Church. In the other case, the Antiochene parent to whom was applied that expression of the admiring heathen, ‘See what mothers these Christians have,’ had the still rarer gift of rearing a son who never fell, who pursued from beginning to end a holy life, who was crowned with a confessorship exceeding the glory of many martyrs, and whose least merit is that he was the greatest preacher of the Eastern Church, and gave to the language of Plato, eight hundred years after him, in its decline, a glory equal to that which the Athenian gave to it in its prime.