St. John Chrysostom

Who they were

John of Antioch earned the surname history filed him under, Chrysostomos, golden mouthed, as the greatest preacher of the Greek Church. His homilies were so alive that stenographers took them down and congregations applauded, which he scolded them for, working verse by verse through Scripture with a pastoral directness that still reads modern.

Drafted against his will to be Patriarch of Constantinople in 398, he treated the imperial capital exactly like a parish: he cut the episcopal luxuries, funded hospitals, and preached against the extravagance of the court with the empress sitting in front of him, which worked out as predictably as it sounds. Deposed and exiled through a collaboration of offended power and jealous clergy, recalled by popular riot, then exiled again, he was finally marched to death across Anatolia in 407. His last words became the motto of the Eastern Church's hope: glory to God for all things. Thirty years later the empire brought his relics home in penance.

Why people turn to St. John Chrysostom

Preachers, teachers, and everyone whose work is words in public, alongside St. Francis de Sales. And those punished precisely for saying the true thing well.

How to ask their intercession

Before the talk, the homily, or the presentation, for golden speech in the service of plain truth, which was his exact ratio. And his final sentence, glory to God for all things, is a complete prayer for the bad ending.