Theodore walked out. Two letters brought him back.

ANTIOCH, Roman Syria, about 370 AD — Theodore walked out. He had been living at Antioch, in Roman Syria, with a small brotherhood. It was a handful of young men living a strict religious life together. Then he went back into the city to see to his money and to get married.

One of the friends he left behind was Saint John Chrysostom, who was in his early twenties. He wrote Theodore two letters.

Four young men and a brand-new idea

Basil was St. John Chrysostom’s closest friend. It was Basil who pushed him to leave home so the two of them could live together. Two of their fellow students from the rhetoric school of Libanius joined them. One of those two was Theodore, a few years younger than St. John Chrysostom and Basil.

Living together like this was still new in Syria. The Egyptian way of doing it came from St. Pachomius. A student of St. Antony had lately brought it in, about twenty years after both of those men died.

The one who had joined hardest

Theodore had thrown himself into it. He ignored good food. He wanted nothing to do with expensive clothes. He spent whole days reading and whole nights praying. He never mentioned how important his family was, and he never thought about his money.

Then he fell for a woman named Hermione, wanted to marry her, and went back into the city. He picked up his business again and pressed on with the wedding.

“Mourn with me”

The first letter was hard, and St. John Chrysostom meant it to be. He took the story of the lost coin and turned it round. In that story the woman finds her coin. Then she calls her neighbours together to be glad with her. St. John Chrysostom wrote that he would call together every friend the two of them shared. He would tell each one not “Rejoice with me” but “Mourn with me.”

But the biggest argument in the first letter is not against the wedding at all. It is against despair, and it runs the whole length of the letter. What sinks a man is despair, he wrote, not the number of his sins.

The second letter is shorter. In it St. John Chrysostom asked Theodore for one thing. He wrote: “stand up bravely, and return speedily to the place from which thou hast departed, and deem not this blow, lasting but for a little while, any reproach.”

The oldest words of his that anyone still has

Those two letters were written about this year, 370 AD. Out of everything St. John Chrysostom ever wrote, they are the earliest that survive.

Theodore read them. He gave up his possessions, gave up the marriage, and came back.