St. John the Beloved
Saturday, December 27th Readings Reflection: Feast of Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist
Today is the Feast of St. John the Beloved Apostle. According to Dom Prosper Gueranger, St. John was of the House of David, so he was therefore related to Our Lady and St. Joseph and, by extension, in some way to Our Lord Himself. According to one tradition, which both Gueranger and St. Thomas Aquinas mention, St. John the Beloved was engaged to be married when Our Lord called him. He thus not only left behind his family, including his father Zebedee, but also his betrothed. This tradition illustrates even more clearly the wholehearted willingness of the Apostles to follow Christ, despite leaving behind everything.
We know from Scripture and Tradition that St. John was a virgin. Dom Prosper Gueranger and St. Thomas explain that Our Lord loved St. John above the other Apostles precisely because of the Apostle’s virginity. The other Apostles were married men who left their families to answer Christ’s call and become the first priests of the Church. St. John, however, was not yet married and thus was still a virgin. In answering Our Lord’s call, he chose a life of celibacy like priests of the Latin Rite of the Church. In the words of Gueranger, “Chastity of soul and body brings him who possesses it into a sacred nearness and intimacy with God” (The Liturgical Year). Because of this pure intimacy with God, St. John was permitted to be closer to Our Lord’s Sacred Heart than any of the other Apostles, as we see at the Last Supper.
Furthermore, St. John’s Gospel contains a certain mysticism that sets it apart from the Synoptic Gospels. St. John’s Gospel seeks to reveal Christ’s divinity, and to this end, it “flies like an eagle above the cloud of human weakness and looks upon the light of unchanging truth with the most lofty and firm eyes of the heart” (Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Prologue). To the disciple whom Jesus loved—that is, St. John—Our Lord confided special secrets from His Sacred Heart, which St. John inerrantly wrote in his Gospel. From St. John’s Gospel, we know Our Lord as the Word made flesh, Whose Nativity we celebrate during this holy Octave and Season of Christmas.
Of the Twelve Apostles (counting St. Matthias, who replaced Judas), St. John alone did not die a martyr’s death. However, he did face martyrdom in Ephesus, where he lived with Our Lady after Christ’s Ascension. According to tradition, St. John was thrown in boiling oil in an attempt to kill him, but he miraculously survived unharmed. He was then exiled to the Island of Patmos, where he experienced the visions that he recorded in Apocalypse. St. John likely died in Ephesus around the year 100 A.D.
At the end of his long life, St. John would always preach the same sermon at every Mass that he offered: “Little children, love one another.” What a fitting lesson to learn from the beloved Apostle, who was so close to Our Lord’s Sacred Heart and from whom we have Christ’s beautiful commandment of love (cf. Jn 13:34). St. John the Beloved Apostle, ora pro nobis!
