πέτρος

Again, he said to Peter:

"Upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

You Jews tell me, how you can attack this prediction of his. How can you show that this prophecy is false? The testimony of the facts will not allow it, even if you are obstinate and dispute it ten thousand times.

How many conflagrations of war have been kindled against the Church? Many armies have taken the field, many weapons have been used, every form of punishment and torture has been contrived. There were frying-pans, racks caldrons, ovens, cisterns, cliffs, fangs of wild beasts, seas, confiscations, and ten thousand other means of torture, unmentionable and unendurable?

And these were used not only by foreigners, but by our own countrymen. Indeed, a sort of civil war held everything in its grip. Rather, it was more bitter than ally civil war. Not only did citizens do battle with citizens, but kinsmen with kinsmen, members of the same household with each other; friends fought friends.

Yet nóne of these things destroyed the Church.

Nor made it weaker.

Certainly...

the wonderful and unexpected thing about this is...

that all these attacks were made against the Church when it was just beginning.  If these dread persecutions were let loose against it after it had taken root, and after the Gospel message had been planted everywhere in the world, it would not be so strange that the Church had resisted these attacks.

But it was at the beginning of her teaching mission. When the seed of faith had just been sown, and the understanding of those who heard the word was still somewhat weak, that these violent wars broke out in all their fury.

The fact that they did not weaken our position...

but even made us prosper all the more...

is the miracle that surpasses all miracles.

You may say...

that the Church now stands firm because of the peace granted to it by the emperors.

To keep you from saying this, God permitted the Church to be attacked and persecuted at a time when it was smaller and seemed to be weaker. God wanted you to learn that the security the Church enjoys today does not come to it from the peace granted by emperors, but from the power of God.


~chrysostomos~
against the jews
homily