Sainthood Sunday: St. John Chrysostom

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Sainthood Sunday: St. John Chrysostom

13 September 2009 View Comments

Sainthood Sunday is a regular feature from Todd Lemieux’s www.sainthoodandsurrender.com. Todd Lemieux is a Catholic speaker and writer and co-author of 100 Things Every Catholic Teen Should Know. You can find out more about Todd’s ministry and find more of his writing on his website.

Sainthood Sunday: St. John Chrysostom

by Todd Lemieux

When you are named a saint, what would you like your surname to mean?

I love that St. John’s means “golden-mouthed.” Here is a guy that was so great at preaching Jesus Christ and the gospel that they actually called him golden-mouthed. He was also so great at preaching the truth that the people in power kept kicking him out of places. No exile was to far for him and he eventually died in his travels to the farthest part of the Roman Empire.

Truth can be a hard thing to proclaim in the face of protest from the powerful and the popular. Especially when the truth is unpopular.

Truth can be an even harder thing to proclaim well. When you think about it, how many of us are good at speaking well? Not everyone is. Public speaking is one of the hardest things that someone can do. However, everyone is good at doing something well. It may not be speaking but it may be a gift that God has given you to spread the truth in another way.

Maybe you are good at business, with numbers.

Maybe you have a gift for law.

Maybe you have a gift for teaching.

Maybe you have a gift for manual labor, fixing things.

In any of these it is important that you open yourself up to the gifts that God has given you in order to spread the Good News, the truth, no matter how unpopular it is.

You may get kicked out of relationships with friends.

You may get kicked out of social environments.

You may get kicked out of a work relationship or environment.

In the end, what is more important? The friendship with the popular, the wealthy, those “in the know” or the fact that despite all of it, you remained the servant of God, putting your gifts at His disposal?

At the end of the day, the perfect manifestations of your gifts will be in the service of the Almighty. It is true of anything. You may not do work that is overtly evangelistic or catechetical, but the important thing is that you tell God that your gifts are His to do with what He wants.

Let God amplify your gifts in the same way that he amplified St. John’s. It isn’t just the fact that he had a natural gift of public speaking, it was that he put it at the service of God and God made his mouth “golden.” God made his gifts indispensable.

In doing so, John suffered. In doing so, John spoke the truth.

In doing so, John became a saint.

May all of our gifts become golden.

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