A classically Anglican celebration of Saint John Chrysostom

Three classically Anglicans reasons to rejoice on the commemoration (in the calendar of the Prayer Book as Proposed in 1928, the English Missal, the Canadian BCP 1962, and TEC's BCP 1979) of Saint John Chrysostom.

1. The fact that the name of Saint John Chrysostom is given to one of the Divine Liturgies of Orthodoxy suggests how the witness of Chrysostom places the liturgy as the heart of the Church's life.  

The Homily 'Of Common Prayer and Sacraments' places the Book of Common Prayer in the tradition of the Divine Liturgy: 

Basilius Magnus, and Iohannes Chrysostomus did in their time prescribe publike orders of publike administration, which they call Liturgies, and in them they appointed the people to answer to the prayers of the Minister.

The Homily also points to Chrysostom's sermon on 1 Corinthians 14, in which he emphasises the relationship between the anaphora in the vernacular and the peoples' 'Amen':

If you shall bless in a barbarian tongue, not knowing what you say, nor able to interpret, the layman cannot respond the Amen. For not hearing the words, 'forever and ever,' which are at the end, he does not say the Amen.

In words that could easily be thought to be Cranmer's in 'Concerning the Service of the Church' and 'Concerning Ceremonies', Chrysostom had said of the Apostle's teaching in 1 Corinthians 14, "Observe how again here he brings his stone to the plumb-line, everywhere seeking the edification of the Church".

Another characteristic of the Book of Common Prayer - its short collects, a target of Puritan criticism (Hooker summarises Cartwright as describing them as "short cuts or shreddings, rather wishes than prayers", LEP V.33) - are described by Sparrow as heeding the advice of Chrysostom on prayer: 

S. Chrysostome among others commends highly short and frequent Prayers with little distances between.

Sparrow also quotes a sermon of Chrysostom on Romans 8, in which the liturgy is beautifully identified with the Apostle's words that "the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered":

Of this the Deacon [in the intercessions of the Divine Liturgy] of the present day is a symbol when he offers up the prayers for the people. This then is what Paul means when he says, the Spirit itself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.

Sparrow points to the Prayer of Saint Chrysostom as embodying the same ministry of the priest as in the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, "the same order of offering up by the Priest" of the peoples' sacrifice of prayer.  

On the commemoration of Saint John Chrysostom, we can therefore celebrate Anglicanism's historic liturgy, and its associated liturgical theology and spirituality, as standing in continuity with the teaching and witness of Chrysostom.

2. The Homily 'A Fruitful Exhortation to the reading and knowledge of Holy Scripture' highly praises Chrysostom:

And (as the great Clerke and godly Preacher Saint Iohn Chrysostome sayth) whatsoeuer is required to saluation of man, is fully contayned in the Scripture of God.

The Homily continues:

If it shall require to teach any trueth, or reprooue false doctrine, to rebuke any vice, to commend any vertue, to giue good counsell, to comfort or to exhort, or to doe any other thing requisite for our salvation, all those things (sayth Saint Chrysostome) we may learne plentifully of the Scripture.

Saint John Chrysostom, then, calls us all - laity and priests - to be rooted in the Scriptures.  This is why the Cranmerian Office is, day-by-day, centred on two weighty readings from holy Scripture, morning and evening.  As Cranmer said in 'Concerning the Service of the Church':

intending thereby, that the Clergy, and especially such as were Ministers in the congregation, should (by often reading, and meditation in God's word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were adversaries to the truth; and further, that the people (by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) might continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of his true Religion.

We are to be rooted in the Scriptures because, as Jewel says in the Apology, here is the means of our salvation:

But the Keys that can Open and Shut the Kingdom of Heaven, We, with St. Chrysostom, call the Knowledge of the Scriptures.

Perhaps we might think of Hans Boersma's Scripture as Real Presence: the 'sacramental' quality of Scripture means that, with Chrysostom, we are to feed on this rich fare. 

The Homily's reference to Chrysostom as a "godly Preacher" reminds that substantive preaching of the Faith needs to be retrieved and renewed as an Anglican characteristic. When Hooker, against his Puritan critics, invokes the great preachers amongst the Fathers, he places Chrysostom first, followed by "Augustine, Leo, and the rest" (V.32.3). Rather amusingly, Hooker notes that the sermons of Chrysostom and the other Fathers were "shorter for the most part than our sermons are", but that such shorter sermons did not prevent them from "compris[ing] much matter in few words". To follow the example of Chrysostom is to engage in serious and substantive preaching of the Faith (and there are some very good contemporary Anglican examples), with "much matter", rooted in the Scriptures.

3. It is perhaps surprising that in the Homily on 'The Worthy receiving and reverend esteeming of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ', it is Chrysostom who is the most quoted patristic authority, ahead of Augustine.  If a defining feature of the eucharistic teaching of the Articles of Religion is found in the phrase "Augustine saith", in the Homily it is "Chrysostom saith".

Chrysostom is also prominent in Cranmer's True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ. The passage below is a good example of this. While some catholic-minded Anglicans might hesitate at Cranmer's language here, it is actually a powerful statement of the sacramental economy - of how we are transformed and renewed through the Sacraments:

the bread and wine be so consecrated, that whosoever with a lively faith doth eat that bread and drink that wine, doth spiritually eat, drink, and feed upon Christ, sitting in heaven with his Father. And this is the whole meaning of St. Chrysostom.

And therefore doth he often say, that we receive Christ in baptism; and when he hath spoken of the receiving of him in the holy communion, by and by he speaketh of the receiving of him in baptism, without declaring any diversity of his presence in the one from his presence in the other.

He saith also in many places, "That we ascend into heaven, and do eat Christ sitting there above".

And where St. Chrysostom and other authors do speak of the wonderful operation of God in his sacraments, passing all man’s wit, senses, and reason, they mean not of the working of God in the water, bread, and wine, but of the marvellous working of God in the hearts of them that receive the sacraments, secretly, inwardly, and spiritually transforming them, renewing, feeding, comforting, and nourishing them with his flesh and blood, through his most Holy Spirit, the same flesh and blood still remaining in heaven.

Note, Cranmer is not denying the working of God in the water, bread, and wine: he is saying that this is not the focus of the Sacraments.  He goes on, after all, to speak of "a sacramental conversion of the bread":

the bread and wine be sacramentally changed into Christ’s body ... For the sacramental bread and wine be not bare and naked figures, but so pithy and effectuous, that whosoever worthily eateth them, eateth spiritually Christ’s flesh and blood, and hath by them everlasting life.

Cranmer was therefore quite willing to use the vivid language of Chrysostom to demonstrate our partaking of Christ in the holy Eucharist:

So doth St. John Chrysostom say, that we see Christ with our eyes, touch him, feel him, and grope him with our hands, fix our teeth in his flesh, taste it, break it, eat it, and digest it, make red our tongues and dye them with his blood, and swallow it, and drink it.

Hooker was likewise prepared to speak as "Chrysostom saith":

the very letter of the word of Christ giveth plain security that these mysteries do as nails fasten us to his very Cross, that by them we draw out, as touching efficacy, force and virtue, even the blood of his gored side, in the wounds of our Redeemer we there dip our tongues, we are dyed red both within and without, our hunger is satisfied and our thirst forever quenched (V.67.12).

Cranmerian liturgy and a Hookerian sacramental understanding therefore cohere with Chrysostom's rich language of eucharistic belief and devotion.

Offering the divine liturgy, feeding on holy Scripture, partaking of the Redeemer in the holy Eucharist: three classically Anglican ways to celebrate Saint John Chrysostom.