St. John, Apostle & Evangelist, December 27
1 John 1:1-4 / John 20:2-8
Cyril Egan wrote a poem called “A Kind of Prayer.” It's about a person who's looking for something. Everywhere he goes, he searches, searches, searches. One day someone asks him what he's searching for, He responds, "I'm looking for God.” Then he adds quickly: "Don't tell me I'll find him in my heart (Though in a sense that's true); And don't tell me I'll find him in my fellow man (Though in a sense that's true, too). What I'm looking for is a God making a five-sense breakthrough to humanity." In other words, he's looking for a God that he can see and touch. That's precisely the kind of God John speaks about in today's reading.
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Do we relate to Jesus in a personal way? "Thomas ... look at my hands ... and believe!” John 20:27
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According to some accounts, St. John lived to a ripe old age whereas the other Apostles were martyred as they went out to preach the Good News. There were also reports that St. John also had suffered persecution and was plunged into boiling oil from which he miraculously escaped unscathed.
There is also the notion that John became a disciple as a very young man, and hence he is often portrayed as the young, beardless apostle at the Last Supper images. The letters of John and the gospel according to John are accredited to his authorship, and in the gospel of John, he is often identified as the "disciple whom Jesus loved".
Indeed, the theme of love is prominent in the letters and in the gospel. St. John was not only in the inner circle together with St. Peter and St. James, he was also a witness to the Resurrection, as we heard in the gospel.
But St. John is also a witness to the love of Jesus and he experienced it such that he even wrote it down in the gospel. It is said that St. John preached this message of love right up to his ripe old age. St. John not only says that he is the disciple whom Jesus loved, he is also saying that we are the disciples whom Jesus loves. Let us ask for his prayers that we will experience the love of Jesus as he did and go out to proclaim that message of love.
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Close to our Lord, obsessed by love. This may well be the marks of John the Evangelist. He had experienced in his person what it means to be loved by Jesus and to love in return. And Jesus was the Lord, God’s Son! In later life he was driven by this love, as his gospel and his first letter reveal to us. He was the man who preached love; the words he used, the urgency and insistence with which he spoke cannot come but from a man who lived this love deeply and who felt that this should be the mark too of the Christian communities.
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How privileged people feel to have a glimpse of the Pope, a living Saint, or a charismatic world leader! How eagerly people reach out to touch them or to have a photograph taken with them! If this is how we feel about earthly leaders, how would we feel about the privilege to see, hear, touch, and live with the Word who is Life! St. John, whose memory we keep today, writes about how privileged he and the other apostles were to have heard, seen, touched, and lived with Christ, the Word of God. He shares his experience of God with us in order to complete his joy, just as Jesus shared with the apostles his experience of the Father for his joy to be in them and their joy to be complete (Jn 15:11).
How privileged must we feel, for we are able to see, touch, and feed on the Lord in the Eucharist! How blessed are we to see and serve him in every human being around us!
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Opening Prayer
Lord God, you are love itself. We know that you loved us first before we could ever love you. Let this unforgettable experience of your “beloved apostle” John become also our deep and lasting experience. May the love you have shown us in your Son Jesus Christ move us to love you very deeply in return and overflow on all those we meet in life. We ask you this through Christ our Lord. Amen
