The Golden-Mouthed Preacher

Today the Church remembers St. John Chrysostom, a great preacher and leader in the early Church. Made Archbishop of Constantinople in 398, he was impolitic enough to denounce the opulence, hypocrisy, and debauchery of the imperial court, earning him banishment in 403.

While I was writing a commentary on Genesis I often consulted Chyrsostom’s homilies. He preached a long series on Genesis, sixty-seven in total. Most of the early Christian interpretations of Genesis that have survived stop soon after first few chapter of Genesis, St. Augustine’s commentary being the most famous for petering out soon after a long theological discussion of the fall.

My first impressions of Chyrsostom’s homilies were negative. He often has long windups, page after page of exhortation to his congregation to pay attention. Sometimes he even digresses to denounce the tendency of some to go off the the horse races rather than attend church. These days it’s more likely to be golf, but it’s fascinating to see how the challenges of ministry haven’t changed.

But I warmed to Chrysostom. At his best he conveys remarkable psychological insights. For example, in his homily on the temptation of Eve by the serpent, Chrysostom paints the picture of a bored woman whose penchant for gossip draws her into a conversation a talking snake, something she ought to have avoided. The larger insight is persuasive. Our negligence rather than a particular malice is often the root of our wickedness. We let ourselves be seduced by evil, because we’re titillated by the possibility of something new, or of feeling important because we have a little tidbit of gossip that nobody else knows.

And I saw in Chrysostom more than a keen sense of the human condition. His reading of Eve as a gossiping housewife has profound biblical resonances. Restraint of the tongue is the object of two of the Ten Commandments: do not take the Lord’s name in vain, and do not bear false witness. Jesus reinforces these prohibitions by urging us to be discrete in our speech, answering with a simply “yes” and “no” rather than piling up oaths. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Epistle of James treats the mouth—its control or lack of control—as the key to virtue and vice. What comes out of the mouths of the church’s teachers guides the community as a whole, for good, and unfortunately also for ill.

It is fitting, perhaps, that the golden-mouthed preacher should know so well the dangers of an undisciplined tongue. With rhetorical gifts come rhetorical temptations. It is difficult to know how to say what needs to be said, and when not to say what needs not to be said. St. John Chrysostom found a solution: speak of Christ, and your tongue will serve that which gives life.

R. R. Reno is editor of First Things.

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Photograph by Ted via Creative Commons. Image cropped.