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John Chrysostom had little patience with sins of any sort, but he was especially piqued at the misuse of wealth:

“It is foolishness and a public madness,” he once preached, “to fill the cupboards with clothing and allow men who are created in God’s image and our likeness to stand naked and trembling with the cold so that they can hardly hold themselves upright.… You are large and fat, you hold drinking parties until late at night, and sleep in a warm, soft bed. And do you not think of how you must give an account of your misuse of the gifts of God?”

This type of preaching—eloquent and uncompromising—would eventually earn John of Antioch the name by which he is now distinguished: Chrysostomos, “the golden mouth.” It would also contribute, though, to his exile and premature death.

Anthusa, a pious Christian woman, gave birth to her only son near the middle of the fourth century in Antioch, the city where the followers of Jesus were first called “Christians.” Her husband, Secundus, a senior government official, died when she was about 20, leaving her with John and a daughter, both quite young. Shunning remarriage, Anthusa devoted the rest of her life to her children.

John was given the best education available in Antioch, a leading intellectual center of the day. He studied under Libanius, the famous pagan rhetorician. Rhetoric—the practice of public address used in the courts and politics—was the leading science of the era; teachers of rhetoric were the pride of every major city. Libanius had traveled the world, having been a professor in Athens and Constantinople; he believed in the pagan cults and disdained Christianity.

John apparently was planning a career in law. But sometime in the years of his formal education, he determined to give himself to the service of God, first by going into monastic seclusion. Like many in his day, he longed for a time apart from the world to grow closer to God. But his mother begged him to wait.

She took him to the room where he was born and in tears told him the one thing that made her widowhood easier was that John resembled his father. She reminded him that the young have their lives in front of them but that she would soon face death. She asked him to spare her a second loneliness and not leave her before she died.

“When you have committed me to the ground and united me with your father’s bones,” she pleaded, “then set out on your long travels and sail whatever sea you please. Then there will be nobody to hinder. But until I breathe my last, be content to live with me.”

John relented and put off his plans for a few years.

In the early 370s, after his mother died, John entered monastic seclusion. He studied under the monk Diodore for a time and then lived as a hermit. John’s ascetic rigors were so strenuous they damaged his health for the rest of his life. Still, this period hardened his spiritual resolve and focused his calling. In addition, he memorized large passages of Scripture, and his ability to quote passages from memory would empower his later sermons.

Though John eventually rejected monastic life for service in the church, he always prized contemplation. In one later sermon, he asked, “For what purpose did Christ go up into the mountain? To teach us that loneliness and retirement is good when we are to pray to God.… For the wilderness is the mother of quiet; it is a calm and a harbor, delivering us from all turmoils.”

Before he had left for seclusion in the nearby hills, John had been ordained a “lector,” a minor church official responsible for reading Scripture in worship. When he returned, he became active in the church of Antioch, serving under Meletius and then Flavian, successive archbishops. Both had suffered for their orthodoxy when Arians (who denied the divinity of Christ) had controlled church and state.

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