A couple of weeks ago the western church celebrated the feast day of St John Chrysostom, one of the Fathers of the Church. A few days later I was leafing through a book called ‘Best Sermons Ever’ when I noticed one given in the year 398 by John Chrysostom himself. We hear some pretty good sermons at St Martin’s, but John Chrysostom was something else. His sermons were often interrupted by applause, and such were his gifts at preaching that he was given the epithet ‘Chrysostom’, meaning ‘Golden-Mouthed’. His patronage includes lecturers, public speakers and preachers. Some 700 of his sermons, and numerous letters and homilies, still survive.
I was reminded of a visit I made some years ago to the monastery of Vatopedi on the Greek peninsula of Athos, also known as the Holy Mountain. There I was shown one of the monastery’s important relics, a fragment of the skull of John Chrysostom with its ‘incorrupt’ ear still attached. The ear is ‘incorrupt’ because St Paul spoke into it. The other ear decomposed naturally.
‘You may kiss the ear’, said the monk, nodding towards the reliquary displayed on a red cushion. The ear looked like a pork scratching retrieved after many years from behind the sofa. I bowed tentatively to the ear, making the feeblest of air-kisses. It was not good enough. ‘Kiss the ear’, commanded the monk, forcing my head down with the heel of his hand.
I think my public speaking abilities may have improved after that experience, and (although I’ve not touched a pork scratching since) I’ve remained a fan of John Chrysostom. One of his well-known quotations, a favourite of mine, has always seemed particularly apt to St Martin’s: ‘If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find Him in the chalice’.
Duncan McCall
