The Life
John was the youngest of the Twelve Apostles. He was a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, the son of Zebedee, the brother of James, and the cousin of the Lord himself through their mothers. The Lord called him “the disciple whom he loved.” John was the only apostle who did not flee at the Lord’s arrest. He stood at the foot of the Cross with the Mother of God. The dying Lord gave Mary into his care, and from that moment John kept her in his home until her Dormition. He lived to be over a hundred years old. He wrote the Fourth Gospel. He wrote the Book of Revelation. He is the only one of the Twelve who did not die a martyr.
On the night the Lord was betrayed, John was reclining next to him at the Last Supper. When the Lord said one of the Twelve would betray him, the others were stunned. They did not know whom he meant. Peter motioned to John — ask him. John, his head against the Lord’s chest, asked: “Who is it, Lord?” The Lord answered him quietly. None of the others heard. The Tradition has loved this scene for two thousand years because it is the supreme image of intimacy with Christ — the disciple’s head on the Master’s heart, listening close.
When the Lord was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, the disciples fled in terror. John alone followed at a distance — first to the high priest’s courtyard, then to the trial before Pilate, then up the road to Golgotha. He was the only one of the Twelve who stood at the Cross. The Mother of God was there with him, and the holy myrrh-bearing women. The Lord, looking down at his Mother and at his beloved disciple, said: “Woman, behold thy son.” Then to John: “Behold thy mother.” From that moment, the Tradition holds, John took the Theotokos into his own home and cared for her as a son until her Dormition.
After the Dormition of the Mother of God, John went to Ephesus and the cities of Asia Minor with his disciple Prochorus. He preached, healed, and worked many miracles. The Roman emperor Domitian, hearing of his fame, summoned him to Rome. Failing to silence him, Domitian banished him to the small island of Patmos in the Aegean. There, on a desolate height, after a three-day fast, the heavens opened. The earth shook. Thunder rumbled. Prochorus fell to the ground in fear. John stood, listening. He heard the voice of the Lord: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” He dictated to Prochorus what he saw — the visions that we now know as the Book of Revelation, written around the year 67.
Around the year 95, on a mountain near Ephesus, John and Prochorus prepared to receive what the Lord wished to give. After a three-day fast, the sky was rent by lightning and thunder. Prochorus was overwhelmed. John stood. A voice came from heaven: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Prochorus wrote. The Gospel of John was given as the Law had once been given to Moses on Sinai — but this time not for the Jews alone, but for all the world to the very ends of the earth. The Gospel that begins in eternity, that opens with the structure of the universe and ends with breakfast on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, was dictated through this beloved disciple in his old age.
There is a beautiful tradition preserved by Saint Jerome about the very old John. He had been bishop of Ephesus for many years. He was so frail that he had to be carried into the church to celebrate the Eucharist. People would gather to hear him preach. By that point, his sermons had been reduced to a single sentence, repeated over and over: “My little children, love one another.” Eventually some of the disciples grew tired of hearing the same line every Sunday and asked him why he kept saying only this. He answered: “It is the commandment of the Lord, and if it alone is fulfilled, that is enough.”
These words are the heart of John’s First Epistle, and the heart of his entire teaching. God is love. Whoever lives in love is living in God, and God is living in him. There is no shorter or deeper definition of God in the entire Bible. There is no shorter or deeper definition of the Christian life. To love is to dwell in God. The aged apostle who, by the end of his life, could only say “little children, love one another” had distilled the entire Christian Gospel into a single sentence. God is love.
John lived to be over a hundred. When he sensed his end approaching, he went out from Ephesus with seven of his disciples to a quiet place, asked them to dig him a grave in the shape of a cross, gave them his last instructions, lay down in the grave, and asked them to cover him over with earth. They did so, weeping. The next day, when other disciples came and opened the grave to see him one last time, the body was not there. There was only the empty earth. John alone of the Twelve did not die by martyrdom. There was a tradition that on the eighth of May every year a fine dust came up from the place of his burial that the faithful gathered as a healing relic.
John matters to every Orthodox Christian for many reasons. He is the supreme model of contemplative intimacy with Christ — the disciple whose head was on the Lord’s breast. He is the supreme example of long faithful witness — a hundred years of love that ended with the simple sentence, “little children, love one another.” He is the only one of the Twelve who stood at the Cross. He cared for the Mother of God for the rest of her earthly life. He wrote the supreme Gospel and the Apocalypse. The Church gives him alone among the apostles the title “Theologian.” He is the patron of every Christian who longs to know the Lord and to keep him close.