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.In this case, new developments of a Christian custom were problematic.Some of the wealthier Antiochenes were indeed opening their houses to the poor, but mainly in order to become even wealthier at their expense.The rich used the occasion as a chance to offer loans to their poorer brethren.Chrysostom, of course, condemned this as a perversion of what the gathering should be, and also condemned the usurers’ likely defense, that they give alms to the poor after they earn interest on the loans.[97]As mentioned earlier, some of the congregation stayed home when they broke the fast.According to the preacher, the people who stayed home from church misjudged what was sinful: by not coming to church after breaking the fast, they compounded their problem.[98] For him, the believers’ bodily purity was less important than their ability and willingness to pay attention to sermons.Although it is possible that the absent ones used their failed fast as an excuse to stay home from church, this attitude fits a broader pattern of thinking.From Chrysostom’s sermons, it becomes clear that the believers were concerned about being physically pure before participating in Christian worship, even though this was not officially required or encouraged.Besides their concern with observing Lent, Chrysostom believed that his congregation worried too much about cleanliness.Even though they were told that physical substances such as food and dirt did not pollute their bodies, lay Christians took care to wash their hands before prayer.Likewise, they believed that they should not pray after having sex with their spouses, even though this was permitted.[99] The Apostolic Constitutions also testify to these beliefs and condemn them.The compiler emphasized that legitimate sexual relations, nocturnal emissions, and menstruation did not pollute Christians or preclude them from religious activities.Similarly, Chrysostom attempted to convince the laity that a misdeed such as insulting another person created more pollution than dirt or marital sex.[100]Chrysostom was worried that the concern with purity stemmed from a tendency toward Jewish customs.After discussing Jesus’ rejection of Jewish dietary laws and bathing, he looked at his own audience and noticed Christians continuing suspiciously similar practices: “For even in the church we see such a custom holding sway among the many, how people take care to come in clean garments and to wash their hands.But how they might present a clean soul to God, they make no account.”[101] Some Antiochenes had adopted attitudes and traditions that connected physical cleanliness and holiness, whether from observing the Jews, from adapting their own ancestors’ Jewish traditions, or from their own spiritual logic which led them to believe that they must be clean when in church.[102] This type of behavior was difficult for Chrysostom to forbid, since, of course, people had to bathe and their desire to show respect to holy places was not objectionable.Despite his hostility to the adoption of seemingly Jewish practices by members of his congregation, he did not forbid them to wash themselves before religious activities, but only asked that they consider washing themselves in virtues as well.[103] All the preacher could do about the practice of ritual bathing was to set it in perspective.He asked people if they would dare to pray if they had dung on their hands.He assumed that they would not, and asked them to think about the reasoning behind this.Why would anyone be reverential in ways that were inconsequential, such as bodily cleanliness, but negligent of sins?[104] These people, however, presumably believed that concern for purity expressed morality and was not a substitute for it.Whether or not these practices stemmed from adherence to the habits of a different religion, it is significant that people adapted them to a Christian context – that is, actions such as hanging a passage of the Gospel above the bed or washing one’s hands before prayer were not merely throwbacks to a non-Christian world, but an expression of belief in the power of the Christian religion and its symbols.Most importantly, these new customs indicate a community of laypeople thinking about their religion and incorporating it into their lives in ways that originated from their own experiences and logic, rather than solely from instructions from church authorities.ConclusionsChrysostom remarked that the adherents to different religions in Antioch were indistinguishable in the marketplace, on the streets, and in the theater.Christians were clearly separated from the rest only in church after the uninitiated were taken away so that the baptized could participate in the mysteries.[105] To the preacher’s mind, this distinction ought to have been visible to everyone, always, in every aspect of the person: the clothing, the words, all of the daily activities.This vision of the Christian life required many practices to be reflexive, natural parts of each day.The new habits of thinking and acting that he tried to instill through his sermons would work together, Chrysostom hoped, eventually creating a truly Christian society.In the cases of oath-swearers and the ones who stayed home from church because they broke their fast, some Christians did respond to their preacher’s demands and change their behavior.But sermons also reveal instances when the laity rejected the preacher’s program of Christianization
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