Leaves from St. John Chrysostom

by Saint John Chrysostom

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.

Summary of his Works

It may be well to give here a summary of St. Chrysostom’s works. Very much of his labour he spent in commenting upon Scripture. This took the form of homilies, of which the larger part was delivered before the people in Antioch. He belongs to the Antiochene school of literal explanation. He was a fellow-pupil under Diodorus of Tarsus, with that Theodorus, afterwards bishop of Mopsuestia, whose writings were the fountain-head of what was afterwards called Nestorianism. They were composed exactly at the same time as those of St. Augustine, and were as prolific for evil as those of St. Augustine for good. But the piety and accurate doctrine of St. Chrysostom preserved him from the errors of his early comrade and friend. His homilies in their structure may be divided into the careful expounding of the text, even to its particles, and then the moral application, both in popular yet scientific form, finished with such skill that the art of eloquence seems blended with that of exposition in the fairest union.

He thus expounded the whole of Genesis in sixty-seven homilies; the Psalms in sixty homilies; the prophet Isaias, but only to the middle of the 8th chapter, according to both the historical and the mystical sense. There are five discourses on St. Anne, the mother of Samuel; three on David and Saul; two on the obscurity of the prophets; six upon the seraphim, in which he speaks on the incomprehensibility of the Divine Being. To the gospel of St. Matthew he has given ninety homilies, so skilfully interweaving Christian doctrine with literal exposition that, in Montfaucon’s opinion, no such work exists elsewhere; and St. Thomas Aquinas is reported to have said that he would rather have it than the city of Paris. He has given seven homilies to the history of Lazarus and Dives in St. Luke; and eighty-eight homilies to the gospel of St. John, shorter, however, than those on St. Matthew. To the Acts of the Apostles he has given fifty-five homilies, delivered at Constantinople, and written down by shorthand. To the epistles of St. Paul he has given two hundred and forty-six homilies; which make up the number of four hundred and eighty-six on the whole New Testament.

All these are counted among his best works: but the best of all, those on the Pauline epistles, particularly that to the Romans. St. Isidore of Pelusium says: ‘I believe if Paul had interpreted himself in Attic phrase, he would have done it no otherwise than this distinguished holy teacher. So admirable is his exposition in meaning, elegance, and choice of words.’

Besides biblical exposition, St. Chrysostom has left a great number of other discourses on various occasions.

Such are eight homilies against the Jews; twelve against the Anomæans, the worst branch of the Arians. Discourses on the great festivals; panegyrics on saints, among them on bishops of Antioch, Ignatius, Babylas, Philogonius, Eustathius, and Meletius. Seven on the Apostle Paul, held at Antioch, whom he seems to have chosen for his model: to have read perpetually, and, as it were, to have seen at his side.

Of occasional discourses, there are twenty-one ‘On the Statues’ held at Antioch in the Lent of 387, full of tenderness and the most stirring eloquence. Of moral discourses, there are two to ‘those about to be illuminated,’ that is, baptised: nine upon penance. Eleven at Constantinople in 398 and 399, one of these in praise of the empress Eudoxia when she came at night to Sancta Sophia to venerate the relics of the martyrs; nine others on various subjects.

Among his dogmatic works are the demonstration against the Jews that Christ is God, proving the divine dignity of the Messias from the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies, from the wonderful spread of the Christian faith, from the fulfilment of the prophecies of Christ, especially on the temple and the Jewish people: the writing on St. Babylas, and against Julian and the heathen. He points out how the miracles worked at Antioch in Julian’s attack on Daphne were a warning to the restorer of heathenism, disregarding which, he was punished by an early death. A treatise on two books to Theodorus, when he lapsed, the Theodorus mentioned above: on compunction, two books: on Providence, three books, to a friend grievously troubled. To the opposers of the monastic life, three books: the comparison between a monk and a king: on the priesthood, six books, written in solitude, in 376. It dwells on the holiness and exalted character of the New Testament priesthood: on its divine powers in offering the sacrifice and forgiving sins; on the difficulty and the dangers of preaching; on the great qualities required by a priest and a bishop. So he excuses himself to his friend Basil for recommending him to an office which he fled from himself. A treatise on the virginal life, which he gives only as a counsel, not as a precept, recognising the honour due to marriage. Two books to a young widow, advising her not to remarry. Against the prohibited dwelling of unmarried women in the same house with priests, and a most beautiful treatise upon ‘No one can be hurt except by himself,’ written in the last moments of his own banishment, of which his own life and death is the best assurance; and a like one ‘on those who are scandalised at misfortunes’.