Titian's John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos where the apostle had been exiled and where he wrote the Book of Revelations. At the National Gallery in Washington, DC.
Today's feast honors the disciple Jesus loved. The feast day is not so much about John as it is about fellowship, about community and about the eternal nature of God: always the way of one who loves someone else -- focus on the loved one rather than self.
Today's scripture readings are to be found at Readings. Click on the Readings tab.In the first reading, John's first letter, we find an invitation for anyone who strives to be in communion with those who knew the man Jesus: "so that you too may have fellowship with us." It is a fellowship that joins us with the Father as well as Jesus.
For me, John's writing in this letter -- as well as the words from St. Augustine in the Office of Readings, a part of the Liturgy of the Hours, the "official" prayer of the Church -- brings me to a moment of consideration of God's eternal nature. John also intends "to proclaim (to you) the eternal life that was with the Father ...." It seems good, it seems spiritually healthy, to take time on occasion to feast on the meaning of the reality so challenging to the human mind and heart in our modern culture: there always was a God, an eternal God. This God cannot be "was." He is. He is the "I am." What a wonderful exercise: imagine, as best as you can, what it means not to have a starting point. That is difficult for the finite, human mind. Something existing without a beginning? Even our words manifest our need to have a time and place for everything: imagine never beginning but always being, without a starting point or date! That's our God. That's the God of John the Evangelist.
This is the eternal God that John invites us to know along with himself and the others who came to know, to see and to touch in the person of Jesus Christ. Is there any wonder that John would author a gospel so different from Matthew, Mark and Luke, the Synoptics (with eyes)? John always endeavors to join us to the eternal not simply alone but with the community of believers. John cam to believe there is a partnership among believers with the eternal Father.
Today's feast and readings calls us to remember that our fellowship, our sense of community joins us with believers in far away places as well as with those who are our neighbors. In a way, these communal bonds join us with those who believe in the God who spoke the Word of life and made that Word visible in the person of Jesus Christ BUT who feel a separation from our Church. Is this feast not, then, a call to continue John's work of proclamation to reunite what is separated from the fullness of the complete joy mentioned in the first reading?
