The Holy, Glorious All-laudable Apostle and Evangelist, Virgin, and
Beloved Friend of Christ, John the Theologian was the son of Zebedee and
Salome, a daughter of St Joseph the Betrothed. He was called by our
Lord Jesus Christ to be one of His Apostles at the same time as his
elder brother James. This took place at Lake Gennesareth (i.e. the Sea
of Galilee). Leaving behind their father, both brothers followed the
Lord.
The Apostle John was especially loved by the Savior for his
sacrificial love and his virginal purity. After his calling, the
Apostle John did not part from the Lord, and he was one of the three
apostles who were particularly close to Him. St John the Theologian was
present when the Lord restored the daughter of Jairus to life, and he
was a witness to the Transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Tabor.
During
the Last Supper, he reclined next to the Lord, and laid his head upon
His breast. He also asked the name of the Savior’s betrayer. The Apostle
John followed after the Lord when they led Him bound from the Garden of
Gethsemane to the court of the iniquitous High Priests Annas and
Caiphas. He was there in the courtyard of the High Priest during the
interrogations of his Teacher and he resolutely followed after him on
the way to Golgotha, grieving with all his heart.
At the foot of
the Cross he stood with the Mother of God and heard the words of the
Crucified Lord addressed to Her from the Cross: “Woman, behold Thy son.”
Then the Lord said to him, “Behold thy Mother” (John 19:26-27). From
that moment the Apostle John, like a loving son, concerned himself over
the Most Holy Virgin Mary, and he served Her until Her Dormition.
After
the Dormition of the Mother of God the Apostle John went to Ephesus and
other cities of Asia Minor to preach the Gospel, taking with him his
own disciple Prochorus. They boarded a ship, which floundered during a
terrible tempest. All the travellers were cast up upon dry ground, and
only the Apostle John remained in the depths of the sea. Prochorus wept
bitterly, bereft of his spiritual father and guide, and he went on
towards Ephesus alone.
On the fourteenth day of his journey he
stood at the shore of the sea and saw that the waves had cast a man
ashore. Going up to him, he recognized the Apostle John, whom the Lord
had preserved alive for fourteen days in the sea. Teacher and disciple
went to Ephesus, where the Apostle John preached incessantly to the
pagans about Christ. His preaching was accompanied by such numerous and
great miracles, that the number of believers increased with each day.
During
this time there had begun a persecution of Christians under the emperor
Nero (56-68). They took the Apostle John for trial at Rome. St John was
sentenced to death for his confession of faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ, but the Lord preserved His chosen one. The apostle drank a cup
of deadly poison, but he remained alive. Later, he emerged unharmed from
a cauldron of boiling oil into which he had been thrown on orders from
the torturer.
After this, they sent the Apostle John off to
imprisonment to the island of Patmos, where he spent many years.
Proceeding along on his way to the place of exile, St John worked many
miracles. On the island of Patmos, his preaching and miracles attracted
to him all the inhabitants of the island, and he enlightened them with
the light of the Gospel. He cast out many devils from the pagan temples,
and he healed a great multitude of the sick.
Sorcerers with
demonic powers showed great hostility to the preaching of the holy
apostle. He especially frightened the chief sorcerer of them all, named
Kinops, who boasted that they would destroy the apostle. But the great
John, by the grace of God acting through him, destroyed all the demonic
artifices to which Kinops resorted, and the haughty sorcerer perished in
the depths of the sea.
The Apostle John withdrew with his
disciple Prochorus to a desolate height, where he imposed upon himself a
three-day fast. As St John prayed the earth quaked and thunder rumbled.
Prochorus fell to the ground in fright. The Apostle John lifted him up
and told him to write down what he was about to say. “I am the Alpha and
the Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord, Who is and Who
was and Who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev 1:8), proclaimed the Spirit
of God through the Apostle John. Thus in about the year 67 the Book of
Revelation was written, known also as the “Apocalypse,” of the holy
Apostle John the Theologian. In this Book were predictions of the
tribulations of the Church and of the end of the world.
After his
prolonged exile, the Apostle John received his freedom and returned to
Ephesus, where he continued with his activity, instructing Christians to
guard against false teachers and their erroneous teachings. In the year
95, the Apostle John wrote his Gospel at Ephesus. He called for all
Christians to love the Lord and one another, and by this to fulfill the
commands of Christ. The Church calls St John the “Apostle of Love”,
since he constantly taught that without love man cannot come near to
God.
In his three Epistles, St John speaks of the significance of
love for God and for neighbor. Already in his old age, he learned of a
youth who had strayed from the true path to follow the leader of a band
of robbers, so St John went out into the wilderness to seek him. Seeing
the holy Elder, the guilty one tried to hide himself, but the Apostle
John ran after him and besought him to stop. He promised to take the
sins of the youth upon himself, if only he would repent and not bring
ruin upon his soul. Shaken by the intense love of the holy Elder, the
youth actually did repent and turn his life around.
St John
reposed when he was more than a hundred years old. He far outlived the
other eyewitnesses of the Lord, and for a long time he remained the only
remaining eyewitness of the earthly life of the Savior.
When it
was time for the departure of the Apostle John, he went out beyond the
city limits of Ephesus with the families of his disciples. He bade them
prepare for him a cross-shaped grave, in which he lay, telling his
disciples that they should cover him over with the soil. The disciples
tearfully kissed their beloved teacher, but not wanting to be
disobedient, they fulfilled his bidding. They covered the face of the
saint with a cloth and filled in the grave. Learning of this, other
disciples of St John came to the place of his burial. When they opened
the grave, they found it empty.
Each year from the grave of the
holy Apostle John on May 8 came forth a fine dust, which believers
gathered up and were healed of sicknesses by it. Therefore, the Church
also celebrates the memory of the holy Apostle John the Theologian on
May 8.
The Lord bestowed on His beloved disciple John and John’s
brother James the name “Sons of Thunder” as an awesome messenger in its
cleansing power of the heavenly fire. And precisely by this the Savior
pointed out the flaming, fiery, sacrificial character of Christian love,
the preacher of which was the Apostle John the Theologian. The eagle,
symbol of the lofty heights of his theological thought, is the
iconographic symbol of the Evangelist John the Theologian. The
appellation “Theologian” is bestown by Holy Church only to St John among
the immediate disciples and Apostles of Christ, as being the seer of
the mysterious Judgments of God.
Source-oca.org
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