The saints

Saint John the Apostle

Apostle and Evangelist · Feast day December 27 · First century · Galilee and Ephesus · Also known as John the Evangelist, the Beloved Disciple

Saint John, the beloved disciple, was one of the inner three closest to Jesus, the writer of the fourth Gospel, three letters, and the Book of Revelation, and by tradition the only apostle to die of old age. His theme, from beginning to end, is love.

Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved.John 13:23 (KJV)

The beloved disciple

John and his older brother James were fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, sons of Zebedee, partners with Peter and Andrew. Jesus called the two brothers Boanerges, the sons of thunder, for their fierce and fiery zeal; it was they who once wanted to call down fire from heaven on a village that would not receive their Lord. That thunder would take a lifetime to be turned, by grace, into love.

With Peter and his brother James, John belonged to the inner three who were closest to Jesus, admitted where the others were not: to the raising of Jairus's daughter, to the glory of the Transfiguration, and to the agony in the garden of Gethsemane. In his own Gospel he never once names himself, only calling himself the disciple whom Jesus loved, a title less of pride than of wonder that he should be loved at all.

It was John who leaned on Jesus at the last supper, close enough to ask him quietly who would betray him. It was John who followed him into the courtyard of the high priest when the others fled, and John alone of the twelve who stood at the foot of the cross with the women. From there the dying Jesus, thinking even in his agony of his mother, gave her into John's care: Woman, behold thy son, and to John, Behold thy mother. And from that hour he took her to his own home. On the morning of the resurrection, told the tomb was empty, John outran Peter to it, and when he saw the linen cloths lying there, he saw and believed.

The evangelist of love

John's Gospel is unlike the other three, soaring, unhurried, and deep, opening not in Bethlehem but in eternity: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It is the Gospel of the great I am sayings, in which Jesus calls himself the bread of life, the light of the world, the good shepherd, the way, the truth, and the life, and the resurrection and the life. It gives us Nicodemus and the new birth, the woman at the well, the raising of Lazarus, the washing of the disciples' feet, and the tenderest and most searching portrait of Christ we possess.

His three short letters return again and again to a single command, older than any of them and yet ever new: that we love one another, for love is of God, and God is love, and he that loveth not knoweth not God. He had learned it from the source, resting against the heart of Jesus. An old and beautiful tradition says that when John was very aged and could no longer walk, he was carried into the assembly at Ephesus, and would only say, over and over, Little children, love one another. When his disciples wearied of hearing the same words and asked why he always said it, he answered that it was the Lord's command, and if only this were done, it was enough.

Exile and Revelation

Tradition holds that in old age John was exiled to the rocky island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. There, on the Lord's day, he was in the Spirit and received the visions written down as the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. It is a book of thunder and glory, of the Lamb who was slain and now reigns, and it ends the whole story of Scripture where the church still fixes its hope: a new heaven and a new earth, the holy city coming down from God, and the promise that he shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying.

By tradition John survived every attempt on his life, returned to Ephesus, and died there in great age, the only one of the twelve not to be martyred and the last of them to fall asleep, having outlived them all and seen the church spread across the world.

Why John still matters

John shows that the closeness Jesus offered was real, personal, and unashamed, that a man could lean on his chest and be loved by name, and could spend a whole long life learning what that love means. He leaves the church its plainest summary of everything worth knowing: God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. The son of thunder became the apostle of love, and that slow transformation, from fire to warmth, is the work grace longs to do in every one of us.

A note for all traditions: the saints are honored across the church as examples of faith and, in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, as friends who pray with us, never worshiped, for worship belongs to God alone. What Scripture records and what later tradition holds are distinguished above. In every tradition there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and every believer, not only the saints, is called to follow him.

Related: Saint James · Saint Peter · The Gospel of John · Saint of the day