The Third Day of Christmas: Saint John the Divine
In our life of faith, we are given a name at Baptism, and we choose a new name at Confirmation. It was a little different for me, as I was baptized and confirmed on the same day as an adult. My mother gave me the name Thomas at my birth, and for my confirmation, I took the name of John, for the Apostle and Evangelist, whose feast day is today.
Given my rather Germanic middle name of Georg, I elected to use a German form of John – Johannes. I later found out that “Johann” was actually a family name from (at least) the 18th Century.
Or, you know, John works too.
Who was Saint John? You can get a pretty good idea by reading (or better yet, praying) the Litany of Saint John.
We know of Saint John from the Gospels, where he is one of Christ’s first apostles, the beloved disciple, younger brother of James. With James and Peter, John forms the inner circle of the apostles, closest to their Master’s confidence.
He is the fiery son of a fisherman, and he was known to the High Priest in Jerusalem. He was certainly educated, and his family may well have moved through the upper circles of Jewish religious life.
At the last supper, he lay his head on his Saviour’s breast.
He was the only apostle to witness the crucifixion. He was one of the first to confirm the resurrection.
It was to him that Christ entrusted His mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
He was himself a magnificent witness to Christ, penning a Gospel that begins with thundering words that echo throughout the heavens:
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.
What came to be through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
He wrote more of the canon: his Revelation and at least one letter – and possibly all three that bear his name.
Two of the verses he wrote are probably the most quoted verses in the entire Bible:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
(John 3:16)
and
“God is love.” (1 John 4:8)
Either one would make a pretty good summary sentence of the entirety of the sacred scriptures.
Alone of the apostles, John did not suffer a martyr’s death. Instead, he died an old man having spent much of his life in a prison exile on the island of Patmos.
Saint Jerome relates that when age and weakness grew upon him so that he was no longer able to preach to the people, he would be carried to the assembly of the faithful by his disciples, with great difficulty; and every time said to his flock only these words: “My dear children, love one another.”
Saint John died in peace at Ephesus in the third year of Trajan (as seems to be gathered from Eusebius’ history of the Saint); that is, the hundredth of the Christian era, or the sixty-sixth from the crucifixion of Christ, Saint John then being about ninety-four years old, according to Saint Epiphanius.
(Heavenly Friends, St. Paul Editions)
Apparently at one point, some brave soul asked Saint John why he always preached the same sentence. The apostle reportedly replied something like, “Once you’ve got that part down, I’ll move on.”
What a model for us! Saint John, apostle and evangelist, pray for us.
O God, who through the blessed Apostle John
have unlocked for us the secrets of your Word,
grant, we pray, that we may grasp with proper understanding
what he has so marvelously brought to our ears.Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.Amen.
After looking for many years, I finally obtained a (printed reproduction of an) icon of this great saint. It depicts him as an old man on Patmos, seated on what I presume is his cathedra and looking over his shoulder.
