This document discusses several early Christian saints from the 4th century, including John Chrysostom, Nicholas, Crispina, Monica, Augustine, and Anthony. It provides short biographies and quotes from their writings about their faith, charitable acts, conversions, and living ascetic lives in the desert to devote themselves fully to God.

1. Persecution &
Triumph:
Christianity in
the 4th Century
Y. A. Monsoun

2. Part VI Christian Saints

3. John Chrysostom
Saint John was called
Chrysostom (golden mouthed)
because of his eloquence. He
was born in Antioch c. 347,
became Archbishop of
Constantinople in 397, and
died in 407.

4. St. John Chrysostom spoke vigorously against wealth in Homily 7
on Colossians:
In truth, to be wealthy does make people senseless and mad. Did
their power reach to such an excess, they would have the earth
too of gold, and walls of gold, perchance the heaven too, and the
air of gold. What a madness is this, what an iniquity, what a
burning fever! Another, made after the image of God, is
perishing of cold; and do you furnish yourself with such things
as these? O the senseless pride! What more would a madman
have done? Do you pay such honor to your excrements, as to
receive them in silver?

5. (continued)
I know that you are shocked at hearing this; but those women
that make such things ought to be shocked, and the husbands
that minister to such distempers. For this is wantonness, and
savageness, and inhumanity, and brutishness, and
lasciviousness. What Scylla, what chimæra, what dragon, yea
rather what demon, what devil would have acted on this wise?
What is the benefit of Christ? What of the Faith? When one has to
put up with men being heathens, yea rather, not heathens, but
demons? If to adorn the head with gold and pearls be not right;
one that uses silver for a service so unclean, how shall he obtain
pardon? Is not the rest enough, although even it is not bearable,
chairs and footstools all of silver? Although even these come of
senselessness. But everywhere is excessive pride; everywhere is
vainglory. Nowhere is it use, but everywhere excess.

6. St. Nicolas (c. 270-343)
was the bishop of Myra
in Asia Minor.
Saint Nicholas AKA Santa Claus

7. Once three impoverished sisters were each in urgent need of a dowry
so St. Nicholas helped them anonymously. Here is the incident
described in The Life of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker by Michael the
Archimandrite:
Nicholas, wishing to use his own money to help the man, and to lead
him with his daughters away from the shameful and dishonorable
deed which had, in truth, already been decided for them — what does
he do? He does not appear to him in person or speak about a gift or
any other type of relief, thereby freeing him from shame while at the
same time very carefully taking the trouble not to trumpet his own
charity. After hurling a bag containing a large amount of gold into the
house through the window at night, he quickly hastened home.

8. (continued)
When the man who had been shown this mercy found the bag
when it had become day, he was seized with joy and with
ungovernable tears and gave thanks to God with amazement and
astonishment, wondering in himself from where so great a
blessing had come to him. The father of the girls, after receiving
this bride-price in the belief it had been provided to them from
God, and considering that the godsend was a sufficient
contribution for a dowry, without delay contrived a marriage for
his first daughter, having acquired for her an honorable life with
joy and pleasure granted by the mediation of saint Nicholas.

9. Nicholas went on to help the other two sisters in
the same manner.

10. St. Nicholas probably did not slap Arius at the
Council of Nicaea, but it is a fun story.

11. Saint Crispina lived in
North Africa. She was
martyred in 304.
Mosaic of St. Crispina in the Basilica of
Sant'Apollinare Nuovo Ravenna

12. St. Augustine wrote of Saint Crispina in his Sermon on Psalm
120: The persecutors turned their rage against Crispina, whose
birthday we celebrate today. They unleashed their savagery
against a rich woman delicately nurtured; but she was strong,
because the Lord was for her a better defense than the hand of
her right hand, and He was guarding her. Is there anyone in
Africa who does not know about these events, brothers and
sisters?

13. Saint Monica (c.333-387)
was the mother of Saint
Augustine. She hoped
her son would join her
in the Christian faith.

14. St. Augustine in The Confessions Book III Chapter 11 wrote of his
mother’s prayers:
19. And You sent Your hand from above, and drew my soul out
of that profound darkness, when my mother, Your faithful one,
wept to you on my behalf more than mothers are wont to weep
the bodily death of their children. For she saw that I was dead by
that faith and spirit which she had from You, and You heard her,
O Lord. You heard her, and despised not her tears, when,
pouring down, they watered the earth under her eyes in every
place where she prayed; yea, You heard her.

15. Saint Augustine
(354-430) was from
Numidia in North
Africa.

16. In a garden of Milan in 386 St. Augustine turned to Jesus Christ. In The
Confessions Book VIII Chapter 12 he wrote of his conversion:
So quickly I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting; for there
had I put down the volume of the apostles, when I rose thence. I
grasped, opened, and in silence read that paragraph on which my eyes
first fell —Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and
wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.
Romans 13:13-14 No further would I read, nor did I need; for
instantly, as the sentence ended — by a light, as it were, of security
infused into my heart — all the gloom of doubt vanished away.

17. The four Great Doctors
of the Church: St.
Augustine, St. Gregory
the Great, St. Jerome,
and St. Ambrose

18. St. Anthony the Great (c.251-356)
lived in Egypt. He trekked out into
the wilderness and became known
as the Father of All Monks.

19. Athanasius in his Life of St. Anthony wrote of the saint’s
kindness toward the poor:
[St. Anthony] went out immediately from the church, and
gave the possessions of his forefathers to the villagers —
they were three hundred acres , productive and very fair —
that they should be no more a clog upon himself and his
sister. And all the rest that was movable he sold, and having
got together much money he gave it to the poor, reserving a
little however for his sister's sake.

20. Saint Anthony was one of the Desert Fathers of Egypt.
Along with the Desert Mothers they sought out the
wilderness and turned their backs on the vanities of the
world.