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Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. X: The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom.: Homily XLV

Gospel of MatthewJohn ChrysostomNicene and Post-Nicene Fathers

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This is a patristic homily — specifically a passage from John Chrysostom's *Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew* — in the tradition of Greek Christian biblical exegesis and moral preaching, likely from the late 4th century. The text closely reads Matthew 13, where Jesus explains to his disciples why he speaks to the crowds in parables, and Chrysostom's central argument is that the crowds' inability to understand is not a matter of divine predestination or necessity but of self-chosen, willful blindness: they "seeing see not" because they actively refused what was plainly offered. He is careful to defend free will against fatalistic readings of "it is given unto you," arguing that God's gift of understanding is conditioned on the recipient's own zeal — those who strive receive more; those who are careless lose even what they appear to have. A distinctive move is his use of Isaiah's prophecy not as proof of divine election but as additional witness against the crowds' culpability, and his insistence that Jesus spoke in parables precisely to provoke and draw them, not to exclude them permanently. The homily closes with an extended ethical exhortation urging the congregation toward charitable giving, reframing almsgiving as reciprocal hospitality toward Christ himself — arguing that since Christ has already given the greater gift (salvation, the Spirit, heavenly inheritance), the refusal to give even water or clothing to the poor is a scandalous ingratitude. Readers interested in early Christian debates over grace, free will, and the hermeneutics of difficult Gospel sayings will find Chrysostom's close-reading method and his pastoral insistence on moral accountability throughout distinctively sharp.

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