This is what you, great hierarch, spoke of: you spoke with a power of speech like the radiance and heat of fire.

With such words, the troparion to Saint John Chrysostom begins – to a man who spent almost his whole life fleeing and fleeing from friends and enemies, from well-wishers and the envious, from the faithful and the treacherous.  The son of a wealthy Antiochian family, brought up in the school of rhetors and advocates, he wanted to be a defender: to defend those who had been insulted and robbed, to defend those falsely accused, and all who have a natural right to protection.

He was a man who avoided the priesthood until forty. A man who preserved youthful idealism into mature age. A man whose thoughts reached to heaven. After one of his sermons, a simple woman once said that his wisdom was such a deep well that the ropes of human thoughts could not reach the level of the water in the well of his thoughts.  Such words made him seek a new approach to our minds and hearts.

Saint John Chrysostom was the man who gave the Church his thoughts and poured them into prayers which, for more than three hundred days each year, are repeated at every Divine Liturgy.

He was a man who had his weaknesses, his strengths and his shortcomings. A figure whom some call almost the most famous Greek “nationalist”, and at the same time one of the best-known Christian internationalists.  Merciful to sinners and accusing those who held power.  A friend to those with whom he sat at the table, and an enemy to those who decided that simply sitting at one table automatically frees a person from sin.  A friend of emperors – and an enemy of their wives and courtiers who decided that closeness to church authority excuses sin and gives the right to act lawlessly and without restraint.

The one through whose lips grace shone forth, the one who illumined the human universe.  Saint John Chrysostom had talents by which he could have gathered all the silver of the whole world, yet by his own example, he showed us what the wisdom of a humble life means.

So, if we put together his words and his life – a life filled with earthly glory and sorrow, with closeness to the greatest earthly power, with betrayal, with human interference and with protection from heaven –  we see one who was driven out, with insults, from the first throne of the Church; who humbled himself, who, barefoot and under guard, was driven out with contempt; who died in a foreign land –  yet for his body, and even for the smallest fragments of his relics, the capitals of ancient empires have, for sixteen centuries, fought, negotiated, and sought pretexts for dialogue.

You, holy Father, died 1,618 years ago, and only 21 years ago, your relics, which travelled from the borders of Georgia to the lands of Rome and Italy, returned to the place where you were chosen as the first hierarch of the Eastern Church.  And Christians of the West, as well, have recognised you as a Doctor of the Church. 

In the eleventh century, you appeared, together with your friends, to John, the Metropolitan of Euchaita, and reconciled the long-standing disputes of philosophers; for this, the Greek people and their rulers acknowledged you as patron of scholars and philosophers, teachers and students. 

And today, in your memory, thousands of Greeks name their sons Chrysostom,  the Georgians – Okropiri,  and the peoples of the world – Ivan, John, Juan, João, Giovanni, Jan, and “Chrysostom”, the Golden-Mouthed. 

Saint John Chrysostom – first hierarch of Constantinople, the one who raised the authority of the See of Constantinople; that same see whose authority has been bought and sold, stunned and crushed, in whose name in Ukraine lawlessness and division are committed, and whose voice has ceased to be a voice of truth and a voice of peace.

Therefore, we, remembering your wisdom and humility, all your counsels and admonitions, beg you:  pray to Christ God, the Word, that He may save our souls, grant us understanding and wisdom to distinguish what is good and reasonable from what is evil and deceitful, and to our country grant Peace, Restoration, Concord, Love, and the Wisdom of the Gospel. 

Troparion, Tone 8:  Grace shining forth from your mouth like a beacon has enlightened the whole earth; it has revealed to the world treasures that cannot be bought and shown us the heights of humility. By your words instruct us, O Father John Chrysostom, and pray to Christ the Word, our God, that He may save our souls.