The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today, the Feast of Saint John, Apostle and evangelist, challenge us to grow in fellowship and experience the tension between the limited appreciation of life in Western culture and the Christian reality of the Word made flesh in Jesus.
The Word of Life
The reading from the First Letter of John testifies to the humanity of the Word of Life.
* [1:1–4] There is a striking parallel to the prologue of the gospel of John (Jn 1:1–18), but the emphasis here is not on the preexistent Word but rather on the apostles’ witness to the incarnation of life by their experience of the historical Jesus. He is the Word of life (1 Jn 1:1; cf. Jn 1:4), the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible (1 Jn 1:2; cf. Jn 1:14), and was heard, seen, looked upon, and touched by the apostles. The purpose of their teaching is to share that life, called fellowship…with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ, with those who receive their witness (1 Jn 1:3; Jn 1:14, 16).1
Psalm 97 praises the Glory of God’s Reign.
* [Psalm 97] The hymn begins with God appearing in a storm, a traditional picture of some ancient Near Eastern gods (Ps 97:1–6); cf. Ps 18:8–16; Mi 1:3–4; Heb 3:3–15. Israel rejoices in the overthrowing of idol worshipers and their gods (Ps 97:7–9) and the rewarding of the faithful righteous (Ps 97:10–12).2
In the Gospel of John, human emotion and mystical experience surround the Resurrection of Jesus.
* [20:1–10] The story of the empty tomb is found in both the Matthean and the Lucan traditions; John’s version seems to be a fusion of the two.3
Eileen Wirth started a Bible reading exercise partially to see if she could plow through the Old Testament as she sought to discover if she really was a Christian.
By reading the entire Bible, I came to see that John and the other evangelists could not possibly have invented Jesus. There is simply no other comparable figure in history or literature. He was a real man from a certain time, place, and culture but his divine message is universal and universally demanding. Christians of every generation and culture can apply it to their circumstances. Reading the whole Bible made me a Christian in fact as well as name. Now the challenge is to live like one!4
Don Schwager quotes “The Word of Life was seen and touched,” by Severus of Antioch (488-538 AD).
"Given that this same John also said, 'No one has ever seen God' (John 1:18, 1 John 1:4:12), how can he assure us that the living Word of Life has been seen and touched? It is clear that it was in his incarnate and human form that he was visible and touchable. What was not true of him by nature became true of him in that way, for he is one and the same indivisible Word, both visible and invisible, and without diminishing in either respect he became touchable in both his divine-human nature. For he worked his miracles in his divinity and suffered for us in his humanity." (excerpt from CATENA)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on 1 John 1:1-4 comments that the Greek word for fellowship, koinonia, means participation in a life and a mission that knits people closely together. St. John, whose feast we celebrate today, knew how important this koinonia was because he had experienced it firsthand, both with the other apostles and with Jesus himself.
Fellowship is a gift that God wants all of us to experience and to share with other people. So on his feast day, honor St. John by finding one small way to deepen your experience of fellowship with someone. Tell that person you are praying for them, or reach out to thank a friend who has supported you in the past. Jesus came to give us an abundant life—and that includes walking together with fellow travelers on the road to heaven! “Jesus, show me ways I can experience deeper fellowship with someone you have placed in my life.”6
Peter Edmonds SJ, a member of the Jesuit community in Stamford Hill, North London, guides us through the evangelist’s unique narrative and encourages us to read the whole of this ‘religious classic’ for ourselves.
It is fitting that we read this gospel during Lent and Easter when we are at our best spiritually. It took time before this gospel was accepted in early Christianity. It was regarded as a dangerous gospel, to be handled with care, because it carried two main risks. It could lead to a neglect of the humanity of Christ, as if the divine Jesus was only pretending to be human. This is known as the heresy of Docetism. It could also lead disciples to claim they could not sin, because they have already undergone judgement in their encounters with the Christ whose glory they have seen. This is known as Gnosticism. These issues are addressed in the Letters of John, which are probably to be dated after the gospel. This writer ‘declared to you what we have seen and heard’ (1 John 1:3) and warned that ‘if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves’ (1 John 1:8). A true classic is a text to which we can return again and again, and always discover something new. Rarely indeed will we pick up the fourth gospel and not learn something fresh about the story, the theology and the drama which it contains. It was surely sound instinct and wisdom that led the Church from earliest times to adopt this gospel as its favourite pedagogical means to introduce the profound mysteries celebrated each year during Lent and Easter.7
Friar Jude Wikler sees the contrast between the prologue in the Gospel of John and the prologue in the First Letter of John as balancing Jesus' Divinity and humanity to counter Gnostic spiritual ideas. The Beloved Disciple is compelled by Love in the race to the tomb, yet Love yields to authority to allow Peter to enter first. Friar Jude suggests the Gospel shows a Beloved Disciple who sees and believes through Love and Peter who keeps the Commandments.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, names some of the realities that have been “unveiled” in recent decades, as well as a reconciling path forward. Neither conservatives nor liberals are willing to carry the burden of living tentatively in a passing and imperfect world. So the contemporary choice offered most of us living in the West is between unstable correctness (liberals) and stable illusion (conservatives)! What a choice! It has little to do with real transformation in either case, because in each case we have manufactured our own false stability.
The Gospel accepts the essentially tragic nature of human existence; it is willing to bear the contradictions that are imprinted on all of reality. It will always be the road less traveled. Let’s call it “unstable stability!” But for some reason, it is the only real stability, because it is a truthful map of reality, and it is always the truth that sets us free. It is contact with Reality that finally heals us. And contemplation, quite simply, is meeting reality in its most simple, immediate, and paradoxical forms. It is the resolving of those seeming contradictions that characterizes the mystics, the saints, the prophets, and all those who pray. This liberation, this ability to hold the paradoxical nature of reality, liberates us from and for. It is the ultimate agreement to participate in the only world there is. True participation in paradox liberates us from our own control towers and for the compelling and overarching vision of the Reign of God—where there are no liberals or conservatives. Here, the paradoxes—life and death, success and failure, loyalty to what is and risk for what needs to be—do not fight with one another, but lie in an endless embrace. We must penetrate behind them—into the infinite mystery that holds all things together.8
The exploration of the Word made Flesh in the Gospel of John is an opportunity to be guided by the Spirit to a greater Reality than our culture of concrete facts permits.
References
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