St. John Chrysostom on the power of Christ’s blood

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 28, 2026

I am hardly the first to notice it, but St. John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) included a magnificent passage on the blood of Christ in his instruction to catechumens, and this has been incorporated by the Church into the Office of Readings* for Good Friday. Several bloggers have reproduced this passage on the web over the past twenty years, but it is certainly worthwhile to present it again here. Moreover, its value is hardly restricted to Good Friday or even to Lent, for the blood of Christ is constitutive of the Church. The Easter Season is a highly appropriate time to reflect on it. Our Lord’s death, after all, is the seed of Easter.

“If we wish to understand the power of Christ’s blood,” explains St. John, “ we should go back to the ancient account of its prefiguration in Egypt”:

Sacrifice a lamb without blemish, commanded Moses, and sprinkle its blood on your doors. If we were to ask him what he meant, and how the blood of an irrational beast could possibly save men endowed with reason, his answer would be that the saving power lies not in the blood itself but in the fact that it is a sign of the Lord’s blood. In those days, when the destroying angel saw the blood on the doors he did not dare to enter, so much less will the devil approach now when he sees, not that figurative blood on the doors, but the true blood on the lips of believers, the doors of the temple of Christ.

“If you desire further proof of the power of this blood,” he continues, we must “remember where it came from, how it ran down from the cross, flowing from the Master’s side”:

The gospel records that when Christ was dead, but still hung on the cross, a soldier came and pierced his side with a lance and immediately there poured out water and blood. Now the water was a symbol of baptism and the blood of the holy eucharist. The soldier pierced the Lord’s side, he breached the wall of the sacred temple, and I have found the treasure and made it my own. So also with the lamb: the Jews sacrificed the victim and I have been saved by it.

“There flowed from his side water and blood,” he emphasizes, insisting that we pay attention: “Beloved, do not pass over this mystery without thought; it has yet another hidden meaning, which I will explain to you”:

I said that water and blood symbolized baptism and the holy eucharist. From these two sacraments the Church is born: from baptism, the cleansing water that gives rebirth and renewal through the Holy Spirit, and from the holy eucharist. Since the symbols of baptism and the eucharist flowed from his side, it was from his side that Christ fashioned the Church, as he had fashioned Eve from the side of Adam. Moses gives a hint of this when he tells the story of the first man and makes him exclaim: Bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh! As God then took a rib from Adam’s side to fashion a woman, so Christ has given us blood and water from his side to fashion the Church. God took the rib when Adam was in a deep sleep, and in the same way Christ gave us the blood and water after his own death.

“Do you understand, then,” St. John demands, “how Christ has united his bride to himself and what food he gives us to eat?”

By one and the same food we are both brought into being and nourished. As a woman nourishes her child with her own blood and milk, so does Christ unceasingly nourish with his own blood those to whom he himself has given life.

Golden Mouth

St. John is called “Chrysostom”, which means “golden mouth”, because of the brilliance of his preaching, which could at times extend for one or two hours or even more. This was at a time when churches typically lacked any type of seating for the congregation. Whether at Mass or during periods of edification or instruction for large groups, people typically received their inspiration standing. (I will grant, however, that there may have been considerable milling around, a phenomenon I myself have experienced in pew-less churches in Rome. But as far as preaching goes, St. John was known to be able to hold his audience.)

St. John served initially as a reader in the Church of Antioch and was later ordained a deacon by a schismatic bishop (Meletius of Antioch). He eventually separated himself from this wayward group, and in time he was ordained a priest by Evagrius of Antioch and was later able to play an important role in reconciling the factions in Antioch and Alexandria with Rome. St. John was so effective in his ministry—indeed, especially in his preaching—that he was named bishop of Constantinople, against his wishes, in 397.

In this great Imperial capital, he had a tumultuous episcopate which included an initial short-lived deposition and banishment, to which his supporters responded by threatening to burn the imperial palace. But he was was banished again in 404, partly for his denunciation of feminine extravagance in dress by Aelia Eudoxia, the wife of the emperor Arcadius—whom John had referred to as “Herodias”! Perhaps more significantly, these trials were also bound up with the controversy over Arianism. Pope Innocent I, striving to preserve orthodoxy, protested John’s exile, but to no avail.

The saint died on a forced march while being removed to the very boundary of the Empire, as far from the capital as possible. Fortunately, many of St. John’s homilies and catechetical instructions have survived—in all some 600 sermons, 246 letters, and a commentary on the Book of Acts. Even now we may hope that he who has ears...will hear.

---

* The Office of Readings, featuring the richness of Scripture and the writings of the saints, is incorporated into the Divine Office (or Liturgy of the Hours), providing more good reasons for lay people to consider praying some portion of the Office regularly. There are many ways to do this, but one simple and inexpensive way is to access the Liturgy of the Hours on your phone. The app I use is iBreviary. This and a number of similar apps are reviewed by Catholic Aptitude. Serial booklets, such as Magnificat and The Word Among Us, play a similar important role.