On January 27/February 9 the holy Orthodox
Church celebrates the translation of the relics of the great hierarch and
ecumenical teacher John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople. His name is
known by every Orthodox Christian, as the Divine Liturgy according to the order
of St. John Chrysostom is served in all churches throughout the greater part of
the Church year.
St. John
was born in the middle of the fourth century in Antioch, in the fourth greatest
city of the Roman Empire, in the center of Syria. There he became a priest.
At the
end of the century, in 398, St. John was elected bishop of the
Constantinopolitan see. To some he seemed a severe, withdrawn, and even
stuck-up person. But this was far from true. Rather, he truly was severe—in the
ascetic podvig of abstinence and prayer, withdrawn—he didn’t love entertainment
and idle company, “stuck-up”—in unceasingly holding himself up to the high
measure of the Christian life. He never demanded from others that which he
himself did not do.
St. John
Chrysostom became one of the most prolific Church writers. In the Russian
translation his works take up twenty large volumes, each of which is divided
into two (and some even into three) books. The lion’s share of the hierarch’s
work is oral preaching, copied down by scribes and then edited by St. John
himself.
Continue reading here: http://orthochristian.com/100897.html
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