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| Icon by Ann Chapin |
Today we celebrate St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, the
principal patron of the Diocese of Cleveland.
Our Cathedral is dedicated to this former fisherman who saw the Lord
face to face, who laid his head on the Lord’s breast, who heard his words, and
in turn proclaimed the message to the world.
The Apostles were people like us: they walked and talked and
slept. They accompanied the Lord in His
public ministry while still on earth.
Yet, like us, their journey with the Lord was also an interior one, they
had to learn to trust, to have faith in moments of darkness; their learning how
to love like the Lord, and to suffer for the sake of the kingdom, was not
without difficulty.
But because they learned the lessons, finished the race, and
were faithful to the end, they are our guides teaching us how to walk with
Jesus, how to love Jesus and love like Jesus.
The writings of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, his
letters and Gospel are saturated with the love of God. “God is love,” John writes, “he who abides in
love abides in God and God abides in him.”
John of course is not the only New Testament author to speak
of love, but he is the only New Testament writer to give us definitions of God:
John writes “God is love”, “God is spirit”, “God is light”. John is not merely asserting that “God loves”
as if God sometimes exercises love and sometimes does other stuff…and John is
certainly not deifying human emotion, like our culture does. John is saying that all of God’s activity is
essentially love, born from love and impressed with love: all that God does, he
does out of love and with love, even if we are not always immediately able to
understand that.
Such a fitting saint to honor during the Christmas season. For
it is from His Gospel we hear that the Word of God became flesh and made his
dwelling among us, out of love for us.
Because we are loved by God, the only adequate response is
to love in return: to love him, with our whole hearts and minds, and to love
our neighbor as ourselves.
John the Apostle laid his head on the breast of the Lord,
putting his ear to His heart. And we are
to do the same, every day, through quiet reflection upon the words and deeds of
Christ. Putting our ears to the heart of
the Lord, means listening to his great love for each of us and the love we are
to have for one another.
And so we are challenged by our Saint today, called often
“the Apostle of Love” to consider, how deeply do I want to know Jesus and to
love him? How seriously do I take the
commandment to love my neighbor and love my enemy? Who have I failed to love as I should?
May our apathy, our selfishness, our fear be transformed
into love for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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