On September 13 the Church honors John Chrysostom (c. 347-407), Archbishop of Constantinople, Doctor of the Church, and the greatest preacher of the early Greek Church. "Chrysostom" — Chrysostomos, "Golden Mouth" — is a posthumous epithet for his preaching, given him by the people of Constantinople. He is venerated in the East as one of the Three Holy Hierarchs, with Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus.
John was born at Antioch, studied rhetoric under Libanius, the leading pagan sophist of the age, and was baptized around 370. He served as deacon and then priest at Antioch for twelve years, where his homilies — on the Gospels, on the Pauline epistles, and against the luxury and corruption of the city — made him famous. In 387, after the Riot of the Statues, he preached the twenty-one Homilies on the Statues that are among the masterpieces of early Christian preaching. In 398 he was consecrated Archbishop of Constantinople, much against his will.
As archbishop he attacked the luxury of the imperial court and the clergy's worldliness, and clashed with the Empress Aelia Eudoxia. He was exiled in 403, recalled briefly, then exiled permanently in 404. Sent to Cucusus in Cappadocia and then ordered moved to Pityus on the Black Sea, he died on the journey at Comana Pontica on September 14, 407, in the church of Saint Basiliscus. His last words were: Doxa tō Theō pantōn heneken — "Glory be to God for all things."
The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom — the anaphora most commonly used in the Byzantine Rite, celebrated by Eastern Orthodox and Greek Catholic Christians throughout the world — is traditionally attributed to him. His relics were translated to the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople on January 28, 438, under Theodosius II. In 1204 the Fourth Crusade looted the relics and carried them to Rome, where they were kept for eight centuries. In 2004, Pope John Paul II returned most of the relics to the Ecumenical Patriarchate; they are now enshrined in the Church of St. George at the Phanar in Istanbul — an act of ecumenical reconciliation that the Eastern Churches commemorate alongside the feast.
John Chrysostom is patron of preachers, lecturers, public speakers, and those who suffer from epilepsy. In the Latin Church his feast is September 13; the Byzantine Rite keeps the Translation of his relics on January 27 and the joint feast of the Three Holy Hierarchs on January 30.
