By Donald Attwater

John of Antioch spoke eloquently and gracefully. Yet it was not because of how he spoke that he gained the surname Chrysostom, “Voice of Gold”; rather, it was because of what he spoke about that made this epithet so fitting. This saint spoke, in the words of Saint John Henry Newman, because his heart and his head brimmed with things worth saying—“keen feelings, living ideas, earnest practical lessons,” each flowing from and pertaining to the glory of God above all things. In Voice of Gold: The Life of Saint John Chrysostom, Donald Attwater presents an engaging and orderly record that exceeds a simple biography. With little to no pretense at being either original or authoritative, Attwater sketches the dynamic personality of Chrysostom and colors it with many vivid quotations from the saint’s own sermons and epistles, telling his life, his speech, and his work, and bringing into sharp relief the world which he strove so strenuously to convert to Christ.

When it first appeared in 1939, Voice of Gold: The Life of Saint John Chrysostom met the need for a Catholic treatment, in English, of this great Father and Doctor of the Church. The ensuing years have done nothing to diminish its luster or its value: the picture of Chrysostom still shines vigorously, as Newman said, like “a day in springtime, bright and rainy, and glittering through its rain.”

I am lighting a lamp—the lamp of God’s word. (Saint John Chrysostom)

Donald Attwater (1892–1977) was a British Catholic author, editor, and translator. During World War I, he fought with the Royal Artillery in the Middle East; while there, he found his interest in Eastern Christianity, which inspired his many books on the saints and spirituality of the Christian Orient. An industrious editor, he also produced A Catholic Dictionary and The Dictionary of Saints as well as an edition (with Herbert Thurston, S.J.) of Butler’s Lives of the Saints in four volumes.

Paperback: 236pp.

ISBN: 978-1685954956