John the Apostle
One
John the Apostle
Today we celebrate the Feast of St. John the Apostle, one of Jesus' closest companions, along with Peter and James. Consider the extraordinary events he witnessed firsthand: He saw Jesus walk on water and feed thousands with just a few loaves. He watched as Jesus raised three people from the dead and commanded the forces of nature with a single word. He witnessed Jesus' power over the forces of hell as He silenced and cast out demons.
John also beheld Christ's full divinity revealed on Mt. Tabor during the Transfiguration, and the glorified Christ after the Resurrection, who walked through locked doors. Finally, he saw Jesus ascend into Heaven, completing the mission of His earthly ministry.
John was an eyewitness to the truth that Jesus is God and He came to give us eternal life. In his first letter, John writes, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”
Two
After Pentecost
After Pentecost, we encounter John in the Acts of the Apostles. Around 42 AD, his brother James was martyred by King Herod, an event that marked the beginning of the Apostles' dispersion to evangelize the world. Peter went to Rome, Thomas to India, and Andrew as far as Kyiv, but there is compelling evidence that John stayed in Jerusalem with Mary, likely until her Assumption around the year fifty.
It is possible that after the martyrdom of James the Less in 66 AD, when Christians were warned to flee Jerusalem ahead of its destruction by the Romans, John journeyed to Rome, where he was reunited with his close friend Peter.
Tertullian (De Praescriptione, xxxvi) recounts that around the age of 80, while in Rome, John was subjected to an attempted execution by Emperor Domitian, who had him cast into a cauldron of boiling oil. Miraculously, John emerged unharmed. Now what do you do with a guy you can’t kill? You banish him. So Domitian had John exiled to the desolate island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea. There, on Patmos John received a Revelation from Jesus which became the book of Revelation, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…I saw the holy city, and the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, as beautiful as a bride all dressed for her husband. Then I heard a loud voice call from the throne, 'You see this city? Here God lives among men. He will make his home among them; they shall be his people, and he will be their God; his name is God-with-them. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone. Then the One sitting on the throne spoke: 'See, I am making all things new.’”
Three
The Gospel of John
After the death of Domitian in 96 AD, John returned to Ephesus. Around this time, a man named Cerinthus, who claimed to be a Christian, began promoting a grave heresy—one that persists in various forms even today. Cerinthus denied the truth of God as three Persons in one Divine Nature. He falsely taught that Jesus was not God but merely a great teacher and human being. According to his heresy, the Christ descended upon Jesus at His Baptism and departed before the Crucifixion, leaving Jesus to endure suffering as an ordinary man. This false teaching, like a persistent weed, has reappeared throughout history. In the 4th century, it emerged as Arianism, and by the 7th century, it resurfaced in Islam, which teaches that God is one, has no Son, and is not a Trinity. That’s right, Islam is not a new revelation from God. Islam is one form of a Christian heresy and as such it is a lie —but that is a discussion for another time.
John fought this lie vigorously because no man could tell John that Jesus was not fully God and fully man in one person. John had lived with Jesus, seen Him die, seen Him risen. Polycarp often recalled how when John went to the baths in Ephesus, one day he saw Cerinthus there and immediately rushed out exclaiming, “Let us fly, lest the roof fall in on us because the enemy of truth, Cerinthus is here.” (Irenaeus "Ad. haer.", III, iii, 4)
Jerome tells us that to set the facts about Jesus straight, the bishops asked John to write his account of Jesus to make as clear as possible that Jesus is God. He agreed to this on one condition, that they all fast and pray before he began to write. When the fast was ended, being filled by the power of the Holy Spirit, he burst forth with the preface of his Gospel coming straight from above, “In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God and the Word was God… The Word was made flesh, he lived among us[*b], and we saw his glory, the glory that is his as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Four
Finding the Lost Sheep
In Clement of Alexandria's work titled "Quis Dives Salvetur?" ("Who is the Rich Man to be Saved?"), specifically in section XIII, Clement recounts a poignant story involving the Apostle John and his concern for a young man who had fallen into a life of robbery.
While in Smyrna to mediate a dispute, John left a young convert in the care of the newly appointed bishop, who was to supervise the youth’s spiritual training. After the convert was baptized, the bishop lost track of him and the next thing anyone knew, the young man had fallen into bad company and taken to crime. Moving from “petty offenses” to major crime, he became the leader of a band of thugs.
When John returned to Smyrna he inquired about the convert. The embarrassed bishop said, “The boy is dead.” “Dead?” asked John. “How did he die?” Then the bishop was forced to tell him that the young man was now the leader of a gang of highwaymen. The old apostle tore his clothing in the Middle Eastern gesture of mourning, and let the thunderbolt of his wrath fall upon the bishop who had been so careless as to neglect to supervise his recent converts.
Despite his old age, John called for a horse and galloped off for the back country where the former convert was believed to be hiding out with his cohorts. Presently, he was surrounded by members of the gang. “I’m not going to try to escape and I ask for no mercy,” said John. “This is what I have come for. Now, take me to your leader.” When the bandit chief saw John, he turned and ran. “Why are you running away from me, my boy?” said John, puffing after him. “Why are you running from your own father, who is unarmed and very old? Be sorry for me, child, not afraid of me. You still have hopes of life. I will account to Christ for you. If need be, I will gladly suffer your death, as the Lord suffered death for us. To save you I will give my own life. Stop! Believe! Christ sent me!” The chief, who could have easily eluded the old man, halted and approached John and fixed his eyes on the ground. The apostle moved toward him and the bandit flung his arms about him, sobbing, while John knelt and kissed the young man’s right hand as a token that the member with which he had wielded his sword had now been cleansed by repentance. And so John led the young man back to Smyrna and, in Clement’s words, “interceded for him with many prayers, shared with him the ordeal of continuous fasting, brought his mind under control by all the enchanting power of his words, and did not leave him … till he had restored him to the Church.”
Five
Love One Another
St. Jerome relates that the Apostle John, in his old age, was carried into the assembly of believers and, being too weak to deliver extended teachings, would simply repeat the exhortation, “Little children, love one another.” When asked why he always repeated these same words, he reportedly answered, “Because it is the Lord’s commandment, and if you keep it, that is enough.”
Now remember, the virtue of love is not a feeling, it is a choice, an action to always do what is good for those we live with.
Can we say that we keep the Lord’s Commandment? I know I have a lot of work to do in this area. That probably needs to be my resolution for the rest of this Christmas season until February 2nd.
In 1 John 4:7, he writes, “Beloved, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love. God's love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son so that we could have life through him; this is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God's love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away. Beloved, since God has loved us so much, we too should love one another. No one has ever seen God; but as long as we love one another God will live in us and his love will be complete in us.”
Irenaeus tells us John lived in Ephesus until the reign of Trajan (98-117) Against Heresies, II, xxii, 5) where he died at an old age.