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 marvellously 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.
There are a couple of unique features of today’s feast. Firstly, unlike all the other Apostles and Evangelists, St John is celebrated in white, rather than in red. The tradition is that all the others were martyred, but John was not, and this is connected with the ending of his Gospel.
Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!” So the rumour spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?” This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. (John 21:20-24)
This important passage connects the writing of the Gospel to the “Beloved Disciple”, which the tradition has always identified as John the brother of James, and it seems very likely that this conversation was inserted at the end of his Gospel when he had already lived to old age. It also does look as though some second person or group of people (the “we” at the end of the passage above) did some final editing of the Gospel – we don’t know how much – but they clearly ascribe the truth recorded in it to the testimony of John, the Beloved Disciple.
This disciple is also credited with the writing of three epistles that appear towards the end of the New Testament, and this is the second distinctive feature of the Feast: both the first reading and the Gospel reading are ascribed to the same author. There are very striking similarities between the vocabulary and the theological emphases of the First Epistle and the Gospel, and countless scholars have speculated as to the exact relationship between them. Which came first? What led to the writing of each of them? Who are the “antichrists” referred to in 1 John? What is the historical relationship between the First Epistle and the other two?
Since no scholar I have read has ever come up with a wholly convincing answer to any of these questions, I shall leave them all as an exercise for the reader. Something to discuss over cold turkey sandwiches, perhaps?
Let us concentrate instead on what is very apparent: that the Gospel and the Epistles alike were written as testimony to a historical reality that is entirely human and yet also something more. Famously, the Gospel begins: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”(John 1:1). This takes the story of Christ back not to his baptism in the Jordan or his birth, not even to his conception in the womb of the Virgin, but to the eternal begetting of the Word within the mysterious life of the Trinity. Yet he goes on to add, just as importantly, “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory”(John 1:14).
The same point is made even more strongly at the beginning of the Epistle, which is today’s first reading: “Something which has existed since the beginning, that we have heard, and we have seen with our own eyes; that we have watched and touched with our hands: the Word, who is life – this is our subject. That life was made visible: we saw it and we are giving our testimony…” (1 John 1:1-3).
The whole of Christ’s life, but in a special way the ministry witnessed by St John and his fellow Apostles, is the making visible of the eternal procession of the Word from the Father. It culminates, of course, in His death of the Cross (which distinctively for St John is the moment of His glorification) and in his resurrection.
As Catholics, professing the faith of the Apostles, we accept the testimony of those twelve men, including the author of the Fourth Gospel. We accept that they heard and saw what is recorded in the Gospels, and we accept their insight into its meaning.
To be a Catholic is to accept the testimony of the Beloved Disciple that the life of Jesus, which he witnessed and shared, is the life of the Word of God made flesh, because, as he tells us in today’s first reading, to accept this testimony is to enter into the spiritual communion that St John shares with the Father and the Son: a communion which is nothing less than eternal life.
On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me ThreeFrench hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree.
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