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| John the Beloved prompted by Peter, and to left James nudged Pater |
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| Sacristy: Tapestry of the Last Supper |
The Feast of Saint John in Christmas Octave is especially identified as John the Beloved.
In the college of the 12 Apostle, the name of John is multiplied, (Main Document; Word found 76 items matching the criteria).
Three texts give the best indications centreing on John the Beloved.
1. Only John and Peter were sent into the city to make the preparation for the Last Supper (Luke 22:8).
2. At the Supper itself his place was next to Christ on Whose breast he leaned (John 13:23, 25).
3. After the Resurrection John with Peter was the first of the disciples to hasten to the grave and he was the first to believe that Christ had truly risen (John 20:2-10).
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| James the Less nudged to Peter - to prompt John - to ask Jesus |
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| Print from Il Cenacolo, Milano |
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December 27: St. John, Apostle and Evangelist
December 27th, 2012
John
was the son of Zebedee and Salome, and the brother of James the
Greater. In the Gospels the two brothers are often called after their
father “the sons of Zebedee” and received from Christ the honorable
title of Boanerges, i.e. “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17).
Originally they were fishermen and fished with their father in the Lake
of Genesareth. According to the usual and entirely probable explanation
they became, however, for a time disciples of John the Baptist, and
were called by Christ from the circle of John’s followers, together with
Peter and Andrew, to become His disciples (John 1:35-42).
The first disciples returned with their new Master from the Jordan to
Galilee and apparently both John and the others remained for some time
with Jesus (cf. John ii, 12, 22; iv, 2, 8, 27 sqq.). Yet after the
second return from Judea, John and his companions went back again to
their trade of fishing until he and they were called by Christ to
definitive discipleship (Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16-20). In the lists of the Apostles John has the second place (Acts 1:13), the third (Mark 3:17), and the fourth (Matthew 10:3; Luke 6:14), yet always after James with the exception of a few passages (Luke 8:51; 9:28 in the Greek text; Acts 1:13).
From James being thus placed first, the conclusion is drawn that John
was the younger of the two brothers. In any case John had a prominent
position in the Apostolic body. Peter, James, and he were the only
witnesses of the raising of Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5:37), of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1), and of the Agony in Gethsemani (Matthew 26:37). Only he and Peter were sent into the city to make the preparation for the Last Supper (Luke 22:8). At the Supper itself his place was next to Christ on Whose breast he leaned (John 13:23, 25).
According to the general interpretation John was also that “other
disciple” who with Peter followed Christ after the arrest into the
palace of the high-priest (John 18:15).
John alone remained near his beloved Master at the foot of the Cross on
Calvary with the Mother of Jesus and the pious women, and took the
desolate Mother into his care as the last legacy of Christ (John 19:25-27).
After the Resurrection John with Peter was the first of the disciples
to hasten to the grave and he was the first to believe that Christ had
truly risen (John 20:2-10).
When later Christ appeared at the Lake of Genesareth John was also the
first of the seven disciples present who recognized his Master standing
on the shore (John 21:7).
The Fourth Evangelist has shown us most clearly how close the
relationship was in which he always stood to his Lord and Master by the
title with which he is accustomed to indicate himself without giving his
name: “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. After Christ’s Ascension and the
Descent of the Holy Spirit, John took, together with Peter, a prominent
part in the founding and guidance of the Church. We see him in the
company of Peter at the healing of the lame man in the Temple (Acts 3:1 sqq.). With Peter he is also thrown into prison (Acts 4:3). Again, we find him with the prince of the Apostles visiting the newly converted in Samaria (Acts 8:14).
We have no positive information concerning the duration of this
activity in Palestine. Apparently John in common with the other Apostles
remained some twelve years in this first field of labour, until the
persecution of Herod Agrippa I led to the scattering of the Apostles
through the various provinces of the Roman Empire (cf. Acts 12:1-17).
Notwithstanding the opinion to the contrary of many writers, it does
not appear improbable that John then went for the first time to Asia
Minor and exercised his Apostolic office in various provinces there. In
any case a Christian community was already in existence at Ephesus
before Paul’s first labours there (cf. “the brethren”, Acts 18:27,
in addition to Priscilla and Aquila), and it is easy to connect a
sojourn of John in these provinces with the fact that the Holy Ghost did
not permit the Apostle Paul on his second missionary journey to
proclaim the Gospel in Asia, Mysia, and Bithynia (Acts 16:6
sq.). There is just as little against such an acceptation in the later
account in Acts of St. Paul’s third missionary journey. But in any case
such a sojourn by John in Asia in this first period was neither long nor
uninterrupted. He returned with the other disciples to Jerusalem for
the Apostolic Council (about A.D. 51). St. Paul in opposing his enemies
in Galatia names John explicitly along with Peter and James the Less as a
“pillar of the Church”, and refers to the recognition which his
Apostolic preaching of a Gospel free from the law received from these
three, the most prominent men of the old Mother-Church at Jerusalem (Galatians 2:9). When Paul came again to Jerusalem after the second and after the third journey (Acts 18:22; 21:17
sq.) he seems no longer to have met John there. Some wish to draw the
conclusion from this that John left Palestine between the years 52 The
Christian writers of the second and third centuries testify to us as
aFrancesca8a tradition universally recognized and doubted by no one that
the Apostle and Evangelist John lived in Asia Minor in the last decades
of the first century and from Ephesus had guided the Churches of that
province. In his “Dialogue with Tryphon” (Chapter 81) St. Justin Martyr
refers to “John, one of the Apostles of Christ” as a witness who had
lived “with us”, that is, at Ephesus. St. Irenæus speaks in very many
places of the Apostle John and his residence in Asia and expressly
declares that he wrote his Gospel at Ephesus (Adv. haer., III, i, 1),
and that he had lived there until the reign of Trajan (loc. cit., II,
xxii, 5). With Eusebius (Hist. eccl., III, xiii, 1) and others we are
obliged to place the Apostle’s banishment to Patmos in the reign of the
Emperor Domitian (81-96). Previous to this, according to Tertullian’s
testimony (De praescript., xxxvi), John had been thrown into a cauldron
of boiling oil before the Porta Latina at Rome without suffering injury.
After Domitian’s death the Apostle returned to Ephesus during the reign
of Trajan, and at Ephesus he died about A.D. 100 at a great age.
Tradition reports many beautiful traits of the last years of his life:
that he refused to remain under the same roof with Cerinthus (Irenaeus
“Ad. haer.”, III, iii, 4); his touching anxiety about a youth who had
become a robber (Clemens Alex., “Quis dives salvetur”, xiii); his
constantly repeated words of exhortation at the end of his life, “Little
children, love one another” (Jerome, “Comm. in ep. ad. Gal.”, vi, 10).
On the other hand the stories told in the apocryphal Acts of John, which
appeared as early as the second century, are unhistorical invention.
Early Christian art usually represents St. John with an eagle,
symbolizing the heights to which he rises in the first chapter of his
Gospel. The chalice as symbolic of St. John, which, according to some
authorities, was not adopted until the thirteenth century, is sometimes
interpreted with reference to the Last Supper, again as connected with
the legend according to which St. John was handed a cup of poisoned
wine, from which, at his blessing, the poison rose in the shape of a
serpent. Perhaps the most natural explanation is to be found in the
words of Christ ...
Cyberbrethern.
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