The Life
Saint John Chrysostom was the most beloved preacher of the early Church. They called him "Golden-Mouthed" because his words moved hearts the way nothing else in the world could. He preached in Antioch and Constantinople, fed thousands of widows and orphans every day, and was twice exiled by an empress who could not bear to hear him tell the truth. The Liturgy that Orthodox Christians celebrate every Sunday morning bears his name. His last words, spoken on a forced march in the cold and rain, were: "Glory to God for all things."
John’s father was a military commander who died right after John was born. His mother Anthusa was twenty years old. She refused to remarry. She gave the rest of her life to raising her son in the Faith. Anthusa’s dedication was so striking that even John’s pagan teacher, the famous philosopher Libanius, exclaimed when he met her: "Heavens, what amazing women there are among the Christians!" She was the soil from which the great preacher grew.
When Anthusa finally fell asleep in the Lord, John was free. He left the city for the wilderness around Antioch and lived as a monk under an experienced spiritual guide for four years. Then he went into a cave by himself for two more years and barely spoke. He fasted so severely that his stomach was permanently damaged — for the rest of his life he could only eat little, and his health would always be fragile. He had to come back to Antioch to recover. But by then his soul had been forged.
Bishop Flavian of Antioch ordained John a priest in 386. For the next twelve years, he stood in the pulpit two or three times a week, sometimes every day, and preached. He preached his way through the whole book of Genesis. Through the Psalms. Through the Gospels of Matthew and John. Through Saint Paul’s letters — every single one of them. Stenographers were always present, copying his words, because the people knew they were hearing something the Church had never heard before. The Antiochian congregation began calling him the Golden-Mouthed. Sixteen hundred years later, those sermons are still in print and Christians still read them.
While John was preaching at Antioch, the Church there was feeding three thousand widows and virgins every single day, plus the wanderers and the sick. He himself organized it. The money was found, the bread was baked, the rolls were distributed by the deacons of the church. When he later went to Constantinople and saw the imperial budget that had been given to the archbishop for his own household, he diverted it all to building hospices and pilgrim hostels. He himself ate almost nothing. The wealth of the Church, he believed, was the property of the poor.
In 397, the great see of Constantinople fell vacant, and they sent for John. He went reluctantly. He found the imperial capital full of moral corruption — a court that lived in luxury while the poor starved, clergy who lived almost as comfortably as the courtiers, an empress named Eudoxia who liked to be flattered. John refused to flatter. He preached the Gospel as it was, and he named the sins that needed to be named. When the empress took the property of a widow whose husband had fallen out of favor, John defended the widow publicly. Eudoxia never forgave him.
Eudoxia gathered a council of bishops who hated John, and they declared him deposed and demanded his execution. The emperor commuted it to exile. The night Saint John left the city, an earthquake shook Constantinople. Eudoxia panicked and sent letters begging him to come back. He returned. The crowds went wild with joy. But two months later she had him exiled again — this time for good. They marched him under guard for three months in the cold and the rain toward a remote outpost on the Black Sea. He was already weak. He never made it. He died at Comana on September 14, 407, with the words: "Glory to God for all things."
Almost every Sunday morning in every Orthodox church on earth, the priest celebrates the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom. The structure of the service, the prayers the priest says quietly at the altar, the great anaphora that consecrates the Bread and the Wine — most of it is from him, or shaped by him, or comes through the Antiochian tradition that he poured himself into. When you go to Liturgy this Sunday, you are praying with the words John gave the Church sixteen hundred years ago. They have not aged. They are still the most luminous words the Eucharist has ever found.
These were the last words John spoke. He was dying, exhausted, in pain, far from the city he loved, broken by enemies who had wished him dead. And from his lips came: Glory to God for all things. This is the deepest summary of the Christian life that has ever been given. The whole Orthodox tradition rests on it.
Saint Paul wrote these words to a church he loved, and Saint John Chrysostom preached on them his whole life. They became his own words. Everything was taken from him at the end, and yet he was the strongest man in Constantinople. The Lord uses what looks like loss to give us what nothing else could.
John died on the road to a forgotten place on the Black Sea. He was buried at the little crypt of the martyr Basiliscus at Comana. The bishops who had condemned him died disgraced. The empress who had hounded him was dead within a year. Thirty years later, the city of Constantinople begged for his bones. They brought them home in solemn procession in 438. The Patriarch Proclus read the people’s tribute over them. The Saint had won. He had been right all along. The Church has been giving him glory ever since.
You are praying with Saint John every Sunday at Liturgy. You are reading him every time you open a patristic commentary on the Gospels or on Saint Paul. You are quoting him every time you say "Glory to God for all things." He is one of the closest fathers any Orthodox Christian has. He was a real human being, frail and sometimes ill, surrounded by enemies, exhausted, exiled, and yet faithful to the very last word. He shows us what it looks like to love the Lord with everything you have, and to keep loving him when everything is taken away.