Monday, December 27, the Feast of St. John the Evangelist

[DemBones DemBones]

I assume we are all familiar with John, "the beloved Disciple," the brother of James, son of Zebedee. Along with St. Peter and St. James, St. John was present at the Transfiguration and at the Agony in the Garden at Gethsemani. John was the only one of all the Disciples to stay at the foot of the cross when Jesus was dying, standing with the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the other women. The dying Jesus told John that Mary was now his mother and told Mary that John was now her son, symbolically making Mary the Mother of the Church and of all of us.

From the article in the Catholic Encyclopedia online, I learned that "The Christian writers of the second and third centuries testify to us as a 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."

Tertullian recorded that John was "thrown into a cauldron of boiling oil before the Porta Latina at Rome "without suffering injury." Then, during Domitian's reign, he was banished to Patmos. 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" such as that he often said "Little children, love one another."

Since I've always been interested in art and symbolism, I'll end this with a paragraph on St. John in Christian art:

"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 to John and James "My chalice indeed you shall drink" (Matthew 20:23)"


Read the entire article here:


http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08492a.htm