Letters to St. Olympia
by St. John Chrysostom
172 pgs.
$21
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“You may hear my living voice through my letters” (Letter 8.11.b)
Saint Olympia, Deaconess
- 361 – 408 AD
Feast day July 25/August 7
In these seventeen letters written from his exile to his spiritual daughter and friend, Saint John Chrysostom guides, comforts, and instructs his Saint Olympia the Deaconess. She too was exiled from Constantinople to Nicomedia for her support of him, and struggled with despondency. While her letters to him have not survived, we can see in his writings the unshaken faith of a Saint who triumphed over persecution.
From the text:
“The wrestlings of virtue do not depend upon age, or bodily strength, but only on the spirit and the disposition. It is indeed always fitting to admire those who pursue virtue, but especially when some are found to cling to it at a time when many are deserting it.”
“I would need a myriad of mouths to adequately proclaim to you this fact, that what is so difficult for virgins to accomplish, this you are accomplishing in your widowhood so easily, without difficulty – the truth of which is proven by your deeds. I marvel not only at the indescribable simplicity of your attire, which surpasses that of the mendicants, but also the absence of form and artfulness in your clothing, your sandals, your gait. These are all the colors of your virtue, which depict outwardly the wisdom [philosophia] that abides in your soul. For ‘the clothing of a man,’ says the Scripture, ‘and the way he laughs and walks, announce the kind of person he is.’1 If you had not violently thrown down to the ground every earthly thought of the display of this world, trampling upon them, and if you had not reached such a degree of scorn for such thoughts, you would not have conquered that most grievous sin; you would not have cast it aside.”
- Sir 19
