Exiled for telling the truth
Chrysostom's final exile and death
The second exile is not like the first. There is no earthquake. There is no recall. The empress and her allies mean it this time.
Chrysostom is sent to Cucusus — a remote, cold, and difficult town in the mountains of Armenia. He is sixty years old, in poor health, his constitution permanently weakened by the years of asceticism in his youth. The journey itself is designed to be punishing: his escorts force him to march through rain and heat, through hostile territory, at a pace intended to break him.
He arrives in Cucusus and continues to write. The letters from his final exile are among the most moving documents in early Christian literature — warm, specific, full of concern for the communities he has left behind, surprisingly free of self-pity. He writes to the deaconess Olympias, who has been his closest colleague in Constantinople, urging her not to despair. God permits all things for our good, he writes. Even this.
His enemies decide Cucusus is not remote enough. He is transferred to Pityus, on the eastern coast of the Black Sea — as far from civilization as the empire can send him. The escorts are ordered to make the journey as difficult as possible regardless of his health.
He does not reach Pityus. He dies on the road in September of 407 AD, at a chapel in Comana in Pontus. His last recorded words, before he loses consciousness, are his characteristic doxology:
Glory to God for all things.
“Glory to God for all things.”
— John Chrysostom, his final words, 407 AD
“In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus toward you.”
Glory to God for all things. Not for some things. Not for the good things. For all things — including the cold road, the hostile escorts, the permanent exile, the dying far from everyone he loved.
This is not toxic positivity. Chrysostom knew exactly what had been done to him and by whom and why. His letters name it. He is not pretending.
But somewhere in the decades of preaching about the goodness of God, the gratitude had gone so deep that it came up last — even on the road to Pityus, even at the end, even dying.
What we say at the end is what we have been rehearsing the whole time. What are you rehearsing?