Life and works of St. John Chrysostom

SAINT JOHN, who received the name Chrysostom for his spiritual eloquence, belongs to the host of those great church luminaries who adorned the spiritual heaven of the Holy Universal Church in the fourth century after the Nativity of Christ. It was a wonderful century in all respects. The Holy Church, having survived terrible times of persecution, when all the forces of evil armed themselves against her in order to crush her and wipe her off the face of the earth, finally triumphed over them, and her sons sat on the throne of the Roman emperors, who paid due tribute to the honor of their saint. Mothers. But with the achievement of external domination in the world, the internal struggle with the moribund forces of paganism had not yet ended. On the contrary, feeling the approach of its complete destruction, paganism strained all its strength to, if not openly, then secretly undermine Christianity, and since the masses of the people were still ossified in pagan error, the efforts of paganism did not remain fruitless. An extraordinary movement of minds took place among the peoples, since they could no longer help but understand the luminous truth of Christianity, but at the same time they were still entangled in the networks of pagan customs and morals, permeated with the poison of superstition, error and corruption throughout their lives. Taking advantage of this undecided state, many false teachers found receptive soil for themselves among the people and successfully sowed the seeds of heresies and errors, which at times proudly raised their heads, threatening the very existence of Christ’s truth. Thus, one of the most dangerous heresies, namely the Arian one, at one time almost filled the entire East and gained dominance even in its capital itself - Constantinople, so that the Orthodox had refuge in only one house church, and all other churches were desecrated by the blasphemous hymns of Arius. But the promise of the divine Founder and Head of the Church is not false, that “even the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). When the storm of heretical error reached its highest strength and threatened to engulf the ship of the Church, at its head appeared a number of great helmsmen who, possessing extraordinary talents, courageously steered the ship entrusted to them through all the pitfalls and furious troubles and forever strengthened it in a quiet harbor on the indestructible anchor of the truth of Orthodoxy. Among such helmsmen, four great men became especially famous, whose names, like luminaries, shine on the pages of the chronicles of the Holy Church. These were Saints Athanasius the Great, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom, whose very names forever became a symbol of spiritual greatness. Each of them, according to the strength of his high talent, served the holy Church, and all of them are still revered as holy universal teachers who illuminated the universe with the light of their Orthodox teaching. But even among them, Saint John was especially marvelous in the richness and diversity of his spiritual gifts, whose teaching enlightened the universe, whose inspired word burned the hearts of people, and his life, full of labors and trials, became an inexhaustible source of edification and strengthening for all the soldiers of Christ laboring on the field of spiritual battle against the dark forces of malice, darkness and delusion. You might be interested in: