Close to the Heart of Christ

St. John the Beloved, Apostle, Evangelist, and Confessor (Dec 27)

Perhaps because of his youth at the time he encountered our Lord, St. John was preserved from the unchastity that creeps into adult life. For that or some other reason it was to St. John that Our Lord entrusted His Blessed Mother (Jn 19:26-27). Perhaps Our Lord trusted him the most because He knew that St. John, of all the apostles, knew His heart the best. After all, it was St. John who, with youthful ease and unabashedness, rested his head upon Our Lord's chest, where he could hear Our Lord's very heartbeat (Jn 13:22-24). This posture, resting on the Lord close to His Heart, listening quietly, is surely the exemplary posture of a Christian at prayer. It was he, who seeing in the tomb Our Lord's empty burial clothes, was the first to understand and believe (Jn 20:8-9).

St. John's writings focus heavily on the reality, meaning, and power of the Resurrection of Jesus in our lives. His writings also focus on our hope of Resurrection, and on the power of love. It is the sixth chapter of his Gospel that gives us our fullest scriptural understanding of the Eucharist - if there was any doubt about what Jesus meant later at the Last Supper, John's recollection of those Eucharistic discourses clarify the matter perfectly. For the convinced Christian, this and other passages serve as beautiful meditations for prayer. He traveled with Our Lord in his formative years, and kept the Blessed Virgin Mary as his own mother in his own home, perhaps for decades more. It was his blessing to be drawn in a very intimate way into the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Surely of all the apostles he knew best the gentle strength of love.

Exiled to the Island of Patmos in his later years, he was blessed by visions from the Holy Spirit showing him many confusing and difficult things. Perhaps only partly understanding them, he assembled them into the Book of Revelation, to finish the scriptural revelation of God to his People, to reveal God's People to themselves.

St. John, so close to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, so chaste and pure, pray for us.