Today is St. John Chrysostom's feast day. Those of you who follow The Journey (our weekly Bible study) know that he's one of the Church fathers that pops up very regularly in our exploration of how the fathers interpreted Scripture. One of the reasons why there are a few names that keep coming up (his, St. Augustine, etc.) is that they are the Church fathers who preached a lot of sermons (which we still have) that get into interpreting specific biblical texts. Yes, even back then, pastors would get the idea to preach through a particular book in the Bible (the lectionary was not really a universal thing yet).

As some of you already know, soon I will begin a series I will call, "Meet the Parents" in which I will introduce you to the Church fathers (and mothers) one at a time, in chronological order. This will be a podcast, posted only to our Locals community (though I will use it to prepare for future episodes of the Way of the Fathers Podcast on XM Radio). But Meet the Parents will be just for our Locals community. In any case, I will eventually get around to an episode on St. John Chrysostom.

Until then, here's a little teaser. The "name" Chrysostom is not really his last name. It's a nickname, really, and it means "golden mouth" - because he had a reputation as a great preacher. He originally wanted to be a monk, but he ended up getting ordained a deacon, and then a priest, and for a while he was a priest in the city of Antioch, in Syria. Later he became the bishop of Constantinople. Everywhere he went, people either loved him or hated him. If you leaned toward the very strictest side of Christianity, you probably loved him. And in spite of the fact that he was a strong proponent of celibacy and monasticism, in his role as a pastor in Antioch he became a great advocate for marriage and family. But he ran into trouble in Constantinople when he openly criticized the empress for her sins (to be fair, her sins were equally public). In any case, it led to him being persecuted, and he eventually died as a result of this persecution. So the Church considers him a martyr, even though the government was supposedly Christian by this time.

As a biblical interpreter, he tends to favor the more historical interpretations, which makes sense given his connection with Antioch (as opposed to someone like the Alexandrian Origen, who always leans into the non-literal interpretations).

Today, one of the things I'll be working on is our Journey session for Saturday, and I already know Chrysostom's name is bound to come up. I've asked him to pray for me as I work on my notes. I hope you'll join me on Saturday.

Please feel free to post anything you might know about Chrysostom or like about him.