St John Chrysostom Quotes

The Holy Scriptures were not given to us that we should enclose them in books, but that we should engrave them upon our hearts.

Everywhere, wherever you may find yourself, you can set up an altar to God in your mind by means of prayer.

If then we have angels, let us be sober, as though we were in the presence of tutors; for there is a demon present also.

Not to share one’s wealth with the poor is to steal from them and to take away their livelihood. It is not our own goods which we hold, but theirs. - St John Chrysostom

For Christians above all men are forbidden to correct the stumblings of sinners by force.

Helping a person in need is good in itself. But the degree of goodness is hugely affected by the attitude with which it is done. If you show resentment because you are helping the person out of a reluctant sense of duty, then the person may recieve your help but may feel awkward and embarrassed. This is because he will feel beholden to you. If,on the other hand, you help the person in a spirit of joy, then the help will be received joyfully. The person will feel neither demeaned nor humiliated by your help, but rather will feel glad to have caused you pleasure by receiving your help. And joy is the appropriate attitude with which to help others because acts of generosity are a source of blessing to the giver as well as the receiver.

Let no one bewail his poverty, For the universal Kingdom has been revealed. Let no one weep for his iniquities, For pardon has shown forth from the grave. Let no one fear death, For the Saviour's death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered When it encountered Thee in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains. It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen. O Death, where is thy sting? O Hell, where is thy victory?

Since it is likely that, being men, they would sin every day, St. Paul consoles his hearers by saying ‘renew yourselves’ from day to day. This is what we do with houses: we keep constantly repairing them as they wear old. You should do the same thing to yourself. Have you sinned today? Have you made your soul old? Do not despair, do not despond, but renew your soul by repentance, and tears, and Confession, and by doing good things. And never cease doing this.

But first I want you to tell me this: do you know the power of love? Christ passed over all the marvellous works which were to be performed by the apostles and said, "By this shall men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another.

For those who have little are not equally held in subjection by their possessions as those who overflow with affluence, for then the love of it becomes more tyrannical. The increase of acquisitions kindles the flame more, and renders those who possess them poorer.

For You are holy, our God, and to You we give glory, to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever...

O Lord, send down Your grace to help me, that I may glorify Your name. Grant me humility, love, and obedience. Implant in me the root of all blessings: the reverence of You in my heart.

The road to hell is paved with the bones of priests and monks, and the skulls of bishops are the lampposts that light the path.

I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us. I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you.

I beg that, chiefest of all, you will remember constantly that not to share our own riches with the poor is a robbery of the poor, and a depriving them of their livelihood; and that that which we possess is not only our own, but also theirs.

St. John Chrysostom said 'Find the door of your heart, you will discover it is the door of the kingdom of God.' So it is inward that we must turn, and not outward - but inward in a very special way. I'm not saying that we must become introspective. I don't mean that we must go inward in the way one does in psychoanalysis or psychology. It is not a journey into my own inwardness, it is a journey through my own self, in order to emerge from the deepest level of self into the place where He is, the point at which God and I meet.

After Christians had spent years destroying books and libraries, St. John Chrysostom, the pre-eminent Greek Father of the Church, proudly declared, “Every trace of the old philosophy and literature of the ancient world has vanished from the face of the earth” – Helen Ellerbe (The Dark Side of Christian History) Pagan temples were either closed, transformed into Christian shrines or demolished. Their properties were summarily added to the Church’s patrimony. The wealth of sundry religions were mercilessly expropriated, their clergy dismissed or persecuted, when not civilly or even physically obliterated – Avro Manhattan (Vatican Billions)

Prayer is the place of refuge for every worry, a foundation for cheerfulness, a source of constant happiness, a protection against sadness. ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

The fourth-century Greek theologian St. John Chrysostom said that Job's greatest trial was that his wife was not taken.

Thus, knowing that Judas would not be turned aside from his treachery, Christ did not desist from trying to turn him from his faithlessness, by counsel, by warnings, by kind treatment, by threatening, by every kind of instruction, and by continually checking him by His words as by a rein. This He did to teach us that, although we know beforehand that the brethren will not be persuaded, we must to all in our power, since the reward of our admonition is sure.

What then if the other come, and say that the Scripture has this, and you that it has something different, and you interpret the Scriptures diversely, dragging their sense (each his own way)? And you then, I ask, have you no understanding, no judgment?

St. John Chrysostom teaches us that all evil comes first from ourselves and only secondly from the devil. If we keep our minds vigilant and our hearts strong in the Faith, the devil has no access to us. The devil only acts on our own evil thoughts and wishes.

As long as we are sheep, we overcome and, though surrounded by countless wolves, we emerge victorious; but if we turn into wolves, we are overcome, for we love the shepherd’s help. He, after all, feeds the sheep not wolves, and will abandon you if you do not let him show his power in you.

St. Chrysostom, suffering under the Empress Eudoxia, tells his friend Cyriacus how he armed himself beforehand...."I thought, will she banish me? 'The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.' Take away my goods? 'Naked came I into the world, and naked must I return.' Will she stone me? I remembered Stephen. Behead me? John Baptist came into my mind," etc. Thus it should be with every one that intends to live and die comfortably: they must, as we say, lay up something for a rainy day; they must stock themselves with graces, store up promises, and furnish themselves with experiences of God's lovingkindness to others and themselves too, that so, when the evil day comes, they may have much good coming thereby.

And it is good that even the humblest of families should enjoy a few luxuries, to bring pleasure to their lives. Yet when luxuries become normal we should be ashamed. When the decoration that we lavish on the house of God is also lavished on the houses of human beings, the pleasure which they afford turns to dust—and the sight of such private luxury is morally obscene. The test of a good society is that the great majority are engaged in the basic arts, and only a few in the arts of luxury. When large numbers are engaged in producing luxuries for the rich, that society has become corrupt.

there remains nothing to hinder the belief that the   devout Levite of Cyprus, the early convert to Christianity while still   in strong sympathy with the Christian Jews, the man of benevolence and   wealth, and therefore probably of education, by birth the appointed   servant of the temple, the man of independence and dignity, and yet of   such tender sympathy as to be surnamed "Son of consolation," the long   and intimate companion of St. Paul, and for years in the position of   his superior,--there is nothing to hinder the acceptance of the early   ecclesiastical statement that he was also the author of the Epistle to   the Hebrews.    Frederic Gardiner.    

Consider that St. Paul was bold in the face of fire, hard as adamant, firm and unshaken, riveted in the fear of God, and absolutely inflexible. “Who,” he asked, “shall separate us from the love of Christ? Will we be separated by tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the word?” But the man who was brave in the face of all those things, who laughed in scorn at the hard gates of death, who broke everything that opposed him: this same man, when he saw someone he loved in tears, was crushed. He did not even conceal his feelings, but said straight away, “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart?” What do you think of that? Does a tear have the power to crush a soul as hard as his? “Yes,” Paul says, “because I can hold out against everything but love. Love prevails, love subdues me.” That is the mind of God. An abyss of water did not drown Paul, but he was crumpled by a few tears.

Think of St. Paul’s tears when he was in prison: for three years, night and day, he did not stop weeping. What fountain can you compare to those tears? The one in Paradise, that waters the entire earth? But this font of tears watered souls, not earth. If some artist were to show us St. Paul bathed in tears and groaning, wouldn’t that be far better to see than a choir of countless singers, all gaily crowned?… With these tears the Church is watered; with these tears souls are planted; with these tears any fire, no matter how fero cious, is quenched…. Christ said, “Blessed are they who mourn, and blessed are they that weep, for they shall laugh.” Nothing is sweeter than these tears; they are sweeter than any laughter…. So tears are not painful. In fact, tears that flow from pious sorrow are better than tears from worldly pleasures and disasters…. For where is a pious tear not useful? In prayers? In exhortations? We give tears an ill name, by not using them the way they were given us to be used.

The main intellectual effort of the patristic age was devoted to the development of the biblical tradition and its adaptation to the understanding and needs of Gentile culture. [...] In the later periods, the Fathers who were most Greek in culture, like Origen and St. John Chrysostom and Theodoret, were also the ones who did most for the study and exposition of the Bible. The essential achievement of the patristic age was the synthesis of Eastern religion and Western culture, or, to be ore precise, the uniting of the spiritual traditions of Israel and of the Christian Church with the intellectual and artistic tradition of Hellenism and the political and social traditions of Rome. This synthesis has remained the foundation of Western culture and has never been destroyed, in spite of the tendency of the Reformation to re-Hebraize Christianity and that of the Renaissance to re-Hellenize culture.

St. John Chrysostom states: “Did you commit sin? Enter the Church [. . .] for here is the physician, not the judge; here one is not investigated, one receives remission of sins” [. . .] If the Church is a “physician,” then Her role is to heal the break with God and neighbor. Sin is missing the mark of being centered on God and His Will and is considered, therefore, to be an illness or infirmity. With healing we are restored to a former condition.27

As St.. Maximos has said, 'To think that one knows prevents one from advancing in knowledge." St. John Chrysostom points out that there is an ignorance which is praiseworthy: it consists in knowing consciously that one knows nothing. In addition, there is a form of ignorance that is worse than any other: not to know that one does not know. Similarly, there is a knowledge that is falsely so called, which occurs when, as St. Paul says, one thinks that one knows but does not know (cf. I Cor. 8:2).

But they [The Scriptures] are expressed obscurely, you say: What is it that is obscure? Tell me. Are there not histories? For (of course) you know the plain parts, in that you enquire about the obscure. There are numberless histories in the Scriptures. Tell me one of these. But you cannot. These things are an excuse, and mere words. Every day, you say, one hears the same things. Tell me, then, do you not hear the same things in the theaters? Do you not see the same things in the race-course?

All things are clear and open that are in the divine Scriptures; the necessary things are all plain.

But they [The Scriptures] are expressed obscurely, you say: What is it that is obscure? Tell me. Are there not histories? For (of course) you know the plain parts, in that you enquire about the obscure.

St. John Chrysostom said, “It is not enough to leave Egypt (sin and death), one must also enter the Promised Land (theosis). Between Egypt and the Promised Land lies a desert.

For this reason perhaps food passes into excrement, that we may not be lovers of luxury.

For so it is, division always makes diminution, concord and agreement make increase.

The verb translated “is open wide” means “enlarge.” The image of an enlarged heart conveys warm affection and love. St. John Chrysostom explains that, as heat causes things to expand, so does Paul’s love for the community cause his heart to expand.[2] A commentator of our day fittingly remarks: “In medical terms, an enlarged heart is a dangerous liability; in spiritual terms, an enlarged heart is a productive asset,”[3] something that is essential for growth in the spiritual life. The Apostle thus grounds his appeal to reconcile with an assurance of his love.

A brilliant student, John Wesley pursued his education at Oxford University from 1720 until 1724. He was adept in a number of languages and appreciated classical culture. He became very interested in the writings of the church fathers (especially St. Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, and later Macarius). He meditated on Bishop Taylor’s Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Holy Living and Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying

reading from St. John Chrysostom that the life of a bishop should be more perfect than the life of a hermit. The reason he gave was that the holiness which the monk preserves in the desert must be preserved by the bishop into the midst of the evil of the world.

following passage from St. Chrysostom (+ 407) has become a veritable classic : " The dispensation of the things that are in heaven God hath not given to angels or to archangels ; for not to these was it said : ' Whatsoever you shall bind/ etc. (Matth. XVIII, 18). They that rule on earth have indeed also power to bind, but the bodies only ; 17 whereas this bond reaches to the soul itself, and transcends the heavens. 18 And what the priests do be low, the same does God ratify above, and the Lord con firms the sentence of His servants. 19 What then has He given them but all heavenly power? For, He saith, ' Whose sins ye shall remit,' etc. (John XX, 23). What power could be greater than this ? ... It would be mani fest folly to contemn such a great power, without which we could obtain neither salvation nor the good things promised. . . . For not only when they regenerate us [in Baptism], but they [the priests] have also the power to forgive the sins committed after regenera tion." 20 The extent of this power is described as follows by Timothy, the second successor of St. Athanasius in the see of Alexandria (+ 384 ) 21 : " Which sins have no for giveness? None; everything confessed before God " will be forgiven.

St. John Chrysostom has the following beautiful simile in one of his homilies: " As a fire which has taken pos session of a forest, cleans it out thoroughly, so the fire of love, wheresoever it falls, takes away and blots out every thing that could injure the divine seed, and purges the earth for the reception of that seed. Where love is, there all evils are taken away." 7 St. Chrysologus says: " You wish to be absolved ? Then love! Charity covereth a multitude of sins. What is worse than the crime of denial? And yet Peter was able to expiate this [crime] solely by love." 8 Among the Schoolmen, Sylvius held a different view, which was, however, rejected by De Lugo and others. 9

If you knew how quickly people would forget you after your death, you would not seek in your life to please anyone but God.

Saint John Chrysostom commented on St. Paul’s distinction between the spiritual man and the natural man and what it means to have the mind of Christ. His preference for spiritual insight over the application of human reasoning is completely consistent with the patristic (and thus, Orthodox) view of the use of human wisdom and philosophy in theology. “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit.” For he is “a natural man,” who attributes everything to reasonings of the mind and considers not that he needs help from above; which is a mark of sheer folly. For God bestowed it that it might learn and receive help from Him, not that it should consider itself sufficient unto itself. . . . For the mind which we have about these things we have of Christ; that is, the knowledge which we have concerning the things of the faith is spiritual; so that with reason we are “judged of no man.” For it is not possible that a natural man should know divine things. . . . For reason was absolutely made of no effect by our inability to apprehend through Gentile wisdom the things above us. You may observe, too, that it was more advantageous to learn in this way from the Spirit. For that is the easiest and clearest of all teaching. . . . “But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16), that is, spiritual, divine, that which has nothing human. For it is not of Plato, nor of Pythagoras, but it is Christ Himself, putting His own things into our mind.9

In union with God, the heart absorbs the Lord and the Lord the heart, and the two become one. Quotation attributed to St John Chrysostom by Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos, 52 (Philokalia IV,252)

St. John Chrysostom writes: If you are a Christian, no earthly city is yours. Of our City “the Builder and Maker is God.” [Heb. 11:10] Though we may gain possession of the whole world, we are withal but strangers and sojourners in it all! We are enrolled in heaven: our citizenship is there!

There comes a heathen and says, 'I wish to become a Christian, but I know not whom to join: there is much fighting and faction among you, much confusion: which doctrine am I to choose?' How shall we answer him? 'Each of you' (says he) 'asserts, ‘I speak the truth.’' No doubt: this is in our favor. For if we told you to be persuaded by arguments, you might well be perplexed: but if we bid you believe the Scriptures, and these are simple and true, the decision is easy for you. If any agree with the Scriptures, he is the Christian; if any fight against them, he is far from this rule.

But we, chaining ourselves down with numberless cares, and carrying with us the numberless burdens of this life, staring about, and loosely rambling, how do we expect to travel in that narrow road?

By the 1580s he had already hired a professional researcher from Chania in Crete—there was a Venetian connection—to search for the oldest and purest of the Chrysostom manuscripts and to buy them. Savile recommended the agent look in Patmos, the beautiful island in the eastern Aegean where the monastery of St John was said to harbour the greatest treasures, and to acquire what he could. It was a lifelong fascination for Savile which culminated in his great edition of Chrysostom’s work, printed and published between 1610 and 1612 at the appalling cost of £ 8,000. By then, Savile had assembled 15,800 sheets of manuscript (which he presented to the Bodleian Library in Oxford). All the great libraries of Europe had been searched, not only in Mount Athos, Constantinople and the island of Chalce, but in Paris, Vienna, Augsburg and Munich.

A few years earlier, the preacher John Chrysostom had said that “the synagogue is not only a brothel . . . it also is a den of robbers and a lodging for wild beasts . . . a dwelling of demons . . . a place of idolatry.”24 St. John Chrysostom’s writings would later be reprinted with enthusiasm in Nazi Germany.

A papyrus fragment shows Bishop Theophilus standing triumphantly over an image of Serapis, Bible in hand, while on the right-hand side monks can be seen attacking the temple. St Benedict, St Martin, St John Chrysostom; the men leading these campaigns of violence were not embarrassing eccentrics but men at the very heart of the Church.

Again, as wine when drunk helps to put an end to our sorrow and brings gladness to the heart, so also the spiritual wine brings joy to the soul. - St. John Chrysostom

Is your body made of stone? Or iron? You are clothed with flesh, human flesh, which is en-flamed by desire as easily as grass. Surely you are not a better philosopher than those great and noble men, who were cast down merely by such a sight? Have you not heard what Solomon says: "If someone walks onto a fire of coals, will he not burn his feet? If someone lights a fire in his lap, will he not burn his clothing?" For even if you did not have intimate relations with the prostitute, in your lust you coupled with her, and you committed the sin in your mind. And it was not only at that time, but also when the theater has closed, and the woman has gone away, her image remains in your soul, along with her words, her figure, her looks, her movement, her rhythm, and her distinctive and meretricious tunes; and having suffered countless wounds you go home.