Dear Friends,
I am amazed at the role that Anthusa had in the life of her son, St. John Chrysostom.
I found this is worth reading.
Paul
AMAZING MOMS
Anthusa
Mother of John Chrysostom circa. 347-407
Anthusa was an intelligent woman living in the city of Antioch in the
4th Century A.D. She was a woman of means, being married to
Secundus, an illustrious officer in the Imperial Army of Syria. The
city
of Antioch was the starting point of the Apostle Paul's three
missionary journeys and was one of the four chief cities of the Roman
Empire. Of its population of about two hundred thousand, half were
thought to have been Christian.
It was in this setting that Anthusa bore a son who she named John.
While John was an infant, Secundus died, leaving her widowed when
she was about twenty years old. Although she had the means to give
her son a good education, she dreaded bringing him up amid the
corruptions of Antioch and decided to teach him at home for a time.
But the burden of rearing him, she later declared, was lightened for
her
by God's support and the joy of seeing in him the image of his father.
Anthusa decided not to marry again, feeling that her child must come
before her own happiness. She devoted her life to her son, who showed
high intelligence and a love for beauty. It was her goal to nurture in
him the highest quality of Christian character. In his early years she
taught him to love the Bible and encouraged him to study and learn it.
She instilled in him an intimate knowledge of the Scriptures which
served to help him later in life.
Anthusa herself was a highly educated woman and transmitted much
of her classical knowledge to her son. When the time was right, she
sent him to the celebrated orator Libanius to study further. As he grew
into a man, she also encouraged him to pursue a career as a preacher
and expositor of the Bible, inspiring him to study theology under the
noted Diodore of Tarsus. While John did study under great men of his
time period, the spiritual interpretations and the practical
applications
found in his great homilies on Genesis, Matthew, John, Romans,
Galatians, Corinthians, Ephesians, Timothy, and Titus owe much to
his mother's early teachings.
John went on to become one of the great Christian Leaders of his
time, earning the name Chrysostom, meaning "Golden-Mouthed".
Though he reveled in his classical education, it was the things of the
Spirit he learned at his mother's home that he credited for giving him
the foundation he needed to succeed as a minister of the Gospel and
becoming the man that he was.
