Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist

27 December  ·  Feast  ·  White

He sits on the rock of Patmos with the book open on his knee and looks up, where the angel points, to the Woman clothed with the sun; a small demon at his feet has failed to take his pen. John, the son of Zebedee and Salome and the brother of James, was a fisherman on the lake of Genesareth when Christ called him. He is the disciple whom Jesus loved; he stood at the Cross and took the Mother of Jesus into his care. He governed the churches of Asia from Ephesus, where St Irenaeus says he wrote his Gospel; under Domitian he was banished to Patmos and there received the Apocalypse; he returned under Trajan and died at Ephesus about the year 100, the last of the Twelve. The Latin Church has kept him on 27 December from early times, in the calendar of Carthage and the Hieronymian Martyrology. The man who leaned on the Lord's breast at supper is the one shown the end of the world.

Leopold Fonck, “St. John the Evangelist”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8 (1910): newadvent.org

The Gospel of the feast

²She ran therefore and cometh to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved and saith to them: They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre: and we know not where they have laid him. ³Peter therefore went out, and the other disciple: and they came to the sepulchre. ⁴And they both ran together: and that other disciple did outrun Peter and came first to the sepulchre. ⁵And when he stooped down, he saw the linen cloths lying: but yet he went not in. ⁶Then cometh Simon Peter, following him, and went into the sepulchre: and saw the linen cloths lying, ⁷And the napkin that had been about his head, not lying with the linen cloths, but apart, wrapped up into one place. ⁸Then that other disciple also went in, who came first to the sepulchre: and he saw and believed.

John 20:2–8, Douay-Rheims (Challoner)

In painting

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