{"id":203,"date":"2007-09-27T08:08:43","date_gmt":"2007-09-27T08:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/09\/more-on-chrysostom.html"},"modified":"2007-09-27T08:08:43","modified_gmt":"2007-09-27T08:08:43","slug":"more-on-chrysostom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/09\/more-on-chrysostom.html","title":{"rendered":"More on Chrysostom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the Pope continued his General Audience catechesis on the Early Church Fathers with a second address on John Chrysostom:<\/a><\/p>\n

\nAgainst this backdrop, precisely in Constantinople, John, in his commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, proposes the model of the early Church (Acts 4:32-37) as a model for society, developing a social “utopia” (an “ideal city”).
\nHe proposed, in fact, to give a soul and Christian face to the city. In other words, Chrysostom understood that it is not enough to give alms, helping the poor now and then. Rather, it is necessary to establish a new structure, a new model of society, a model based on the New Testament perspective. It is this new society that is revealed in the nascent Church.
\nTherefore, John Chrysostom truly becomes one of the great Fathers of the Church’s social doctrine: The old idea of the Greek “polis” is replaced with a new idea of a city inspired by the Christian faith. Chrysostom affirmed with Paul (cf. 1 Corinthians 8:11) the primacy of the individual Christian, of the person as a person, including the slave and the poor man. His project corrected the traditional Greek view of the “polis,” of the city, in which large portions of the population were excluded from the rights of citizenship. In the Christian city, all are brothers and sisters with equal rights.
\nThe primacy of the person is also a consequence of the fact that the city is constructed on the foundation of the person. In the Greek “polis,” on the other hand, the country was more important than the individual, who was totally subordinated to the city as a whole. In this way, with Chrysostom, the vision of a society built by the Christian conscience begins. And he tells us that our “polis” is another, “our homeland is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20) and this homeland of ours, even on this earth, renders us all equals, brothers and sisters, and obligates us to solidarity.
\nAt the end of his life, from his exile on the borders of Armenia, “the most remote place in the world,” John, going back to his first sermon in 386, once again took up the theme so dear to him — the plan of God for humanity. It is an “unutterable and incomprehensible” plan, but which is surely guided by him with love (cf. “On Providence” 2:6).
\nThis is our certainty. Even if we cannot decode the details of personal and collective history, we know that God’s plan is always inspired by love. Therefore, despite his sufferings, John Chrysostom reaffirmed the discovery that God loves every one of us with an infinite love, and therefore he desires the salvation of all.
\nFor his part, the bishop-saint cooperated generously with this salvation, without holding anything back, throughout his entire life. In fact, he considered God’s glory the ultimate goal of his existence, which — as he was dying — he left as his last testament: “Glory to God for everything!” (Palladio, “Life” 11).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, the Pope continued his General Audience catechesis on the Early Church Fathers with a second address on John Chrysostom: Against this backdrop, precisely in Constantinople, John, in his commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, proposes the model of the early Church (Acts 4:32-37) as a model for society, developing a social “utopia” (an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMore on Chrysostom - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/09\/more-on-chrysostom.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"More on Chrysostom - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}