Homilies on Colossians

St. John Chrysostom, the "golden-mouthed" preacher of antiquity, brings his legendary rhetorical power to bear on Paul's Letter to the Colossians in these nineteen surviving homilies. Written when Paul himself was in chains, Chrysostom reads the epistle not as mere doctrine but as a lifeline thrown to a community navigating the seductions of false philosophy and spiritual complacency. His exposition pulses with pastoral urgency: he wants his listeners not merely to understand Christ but to feel Him, to let the mystery of the Incarnation remake their lives. What distinguishes these homilies is their uncanny contemporaneity. Chrysostom confronts the same anxieties that plague modern readers, the temptation of empty religion, the hunger for wisdom that promises much and delivers little, and he does so with a rhetorical fire that makes ancient Greek sing. For anyone seeking to understand how the early church read Paul, or desiring a faith that speaks to the bones rather than merely the mind, these homilies remain indispensable.