LIVES OF THE SAINTS
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:1
St. John
the Theologian and Evangelist
John was the younger of Zebedee's two sons, and the youngest of the Twelve. The Gospel that bears his name never gives him his own, calling him only the disciple whom Jesus loved, the one who leaned upon Christ at the Last Supper and the only one of the Twelve who did not flee but stood at the foot of the Cross. From there, as He was dying, Christ gave His mother into John's keeping, Behold your mother, and tradition holds that the Theotokos lived under his care, in Jerusalem and later near Ephesus, until her Dormition.
He is called the Theologian, a title the Orthodox Church has given to only three of its saints, because his Gospel begins where no other begins, not with a manger or a genealogy but before the beginning of all things: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Those opening words have shaped the Church's confession of Christ ever since, and they are why his icon so often shows him pausing, pen lifted, listening for what to write.
John is the only apostle believed to have died in peace rather than by violence, though peace came late and not without suffering. He was exiled to the island of Patmos under the emperor Domitian, and there, in a cave, received the visions of the end of all things that he set down as the Book of Revelation. To him the Church owes the fourth Gospel, three letters, and that Apocalypse.
His letters return again and again to a single command, that we love one another, and an ancient tradition recalls that in extreme old age, when he could no longer manage a sermon, he asked only to be carried into the assembly to say, Little children, love one another. Asked why he said nothing else, he answered that it was the Lord's command, and that if it alone were kept, it was enough. In the icon he is shown as an old man with a high forehead, holding the Gospel book. He is the apostle of love, and of the Word that was from the beginning.
Feast Day of
St. John
September 26
Apolytikion of
St. John
Tone 2
Beloved Apostle of Christ our God, hasten to deliver a people without defense. He who permitted you to recline upon His bosom, accepts you on bended knee before Him. Beseech Him, O Theologian, to dispel the persistent cloud of nations, asking for us peace and great mercy.
Kontakion of
St. John
Tone 2