The Transfer of the Precious Relics (438) of Our Father among the Saints John Chrysostom.
Polyeleos Feast.
Hebrews 7:26-8:2. John 10:9-16.
Read John 10:9-16
Christ is born! Glorify Him!
I am writing this reflection right after the Bible Study that we had at our parish reflecting on Jesus’ parable on the Prodigal Son. One can only imagine the deepness and profoundness of the fall and sufferings caused by the moral descent of the younger brother from the story. Once being a wealthy and beloved heir of his father, the prodigal son has lost everything and everyone including himself and his dignity. Sharing his food with the unclean swine, he found himself on the bottom of life, where sometimes we can find ourselves in our loneliness and sufferings caused by our own transgressions. We can easily relate ourselves to the prodigal son because we can also feel lost and deeply unhappy. Thus, how can we rediscover the way back to the Father who unconditionally loves us? Where do we find the truth about our life that can lead us back home where we are always accepted and welcomed?
The answer is JESUS. He says: “I am the Truth, the Way, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6). It is only through Him that “we have access to the Father” (Eph. 2:18) for He is the Good Shepherd who does not “run away” and who does not “leave us” (Jn. 10:12), for He truly “knows us as the Father knows him” (Jn. 10:14-15), and He is “laying down His life” for us, so we “may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn. 10:10).
When in warm weather the sheep were out on the hills of Palestine and did not return to the village, the shepherd would collect them into a sheepfold surrounded by a wall but with no door. Therefore, the shepherd would play the role of the living door by sleeping on the ground across the opening, so no sheep could get out or in except over his body. Jesus is “the Gate” for “whoever enters by Him will be saved, and will come in and come out and find pasture” (Jn. 10:9).
St. John Chrysostom, whose transfer of the precious relics we celebrate today, was also the good shepherd to his flock of the Church of Constantinople for his leadership was based on the example of Jesus. He fearlessly and self-sacrificially defended his flock from the internal wolfs breaking up Church’s orthodoxy by all kinds of heretical teachings and from the external wolfs such, as empress Eudoxia, who scattered the Church by her intrigues and the subsequent condemnation of St. John Chrysostom for his daring denunciation of the vices of those ruling over Constantinople. Even though, St. John died as a confessor of faith in the city of Comana on his way to exile, some thirty years later his venerable relics were transferred back to the Church of the Holy Apostles, during the reign of Eudoxia’s son emperor Theodosius II.