St. John

1. The Fisherman from Galilee

John was working. Mark places the call at the lakeside: Jesus sees James and John in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending the nets, and calls them, and they leave the boat and the hired men and follow him (Mark 1:19 to 20). Luke adds that James and John were partners with Simon in the fishing business (Luke 5:10). The detail about hired servants suggests a working concern rather than subsistence, and the family evidently had some standing.

Their mother appears in Matthew's Gospel, and is often identified with the Salome named among the women at the crucifixion in Mark 15:40. The Gospels give no birth date, and the tradition that John was the youngest of the Twelve rests on the length of his later life and on the way Christian art has always painted him rather than on any statement in Scripture.

The people in front of the reader here are ordinary. When Peter and John are examined by the Sanhedrin, the council notes that they are uneducated and ordinary men and is astonished at their boldness (Acts 4:13). The Gospel that opens with the Word who was with God in the beginning was carried into the world by men the authorities regarded as tradesmen.

2. The Inner Circle

Three of the Twelve are repeatedly taken apart from the rest, and John is one of them. Peter, James and John are the only disciples brought into the room when Jesus raises the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:37). The same three go up the mountain for the Transfiguration and see the change in his appearance and Moses and Elijah with him (Mark 9:2). The same three are taken further into the garden of Gethsemane, told that his soul is sorrowful even to death, and asked to watch, and they fall asleep (Mark 14:33 to 37).

The pattern is worth noticing for what it includes. The three are present for a raising from the dead, for glory, and for terror. They are not spared the third by being given the first two. Whatever privilege John has in the Gospels comes with the requirement to stay awake through the worst night of his life, and he fails at it like the others.

3. Sons of Thunder

Mark records that Jesus gave James and John the name Boanerges, which he translates as sons of thunder (Mark 3:17). The Gospel does not explain the nickname, and the incidents around it suggest a reason.

When a Samaritan village refuses to receive Jesus, James and John ask whether they should call down fire from heaven to consume it, and Jesus rebukes them (Luke 9:54 to 55). They ask, in Mark's account, to sit at his right and his left in his glory, and Jesus answers that they do not know what they are asking, and that greatness in his kingdom is service (Mark 10:35 to 45). Matthew attributes the request to their mother, who comes to Jesus with her sons (Matthew 20:20 to 21). Either way the other ten are indignant.

The apostle whose letters press love harder than any other New Testament writer began as a young man who wanted to incinerate a village and asked for the best seat. Sanctity in the Gospels arrives as a temperament redirected over years.

4. At the Foot of the Cross

John's Gospel places the disciple whom Jesus loved at the cross with Mary, and records the words spoken from it. Jesus says to his mother, "Woman, behold your son", and to the disciple, "Behold your mother", and from that hour the disciple took her into his own home (John 19:26 to 27).

Two things follow from those lines. The first is practical: a dying son provided for his mother. The second is the one the Church has always read out of the scene. Christ gives his mother to the disciple, and the disciple takes her home, which is the pattern of Marian devotion in the Catholic tradition. Mary is received into the household of the believer at the direction of Christ himself.

The other Gospels do not name the disciples present at the crucifixion in this way, and Mark reports the women watching from a distance while the disciples have fled. Christian tradition has therefore honoured John as the apostle who did not run. The Gospels do not stage that as heroism, and John's own account gives him no speech at the cross. He is simply there, and then he takes her home.

5. The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved

The fourth Gospel never gives the name of its central witness. It calls him the disciple whom Jesus loved, and shows him reclining next to Jesus at the last supper (John 13:23), at the cross (John 19:26), running to the empty tomb ahead of Peter and going in after him (John 20:2 to 8), recognising the risen Christ on the shore (John 21:7), and at the end it states that this is the disciple who is testifying to these things and who wrote them, and that his testimony is true (John 21:24).

The identification of that disciple with John the son of Zebedee is early and external to the text. Irenaeus, writing in the late second century, states that John, the disciple of the Lord, who leaned on his breast, published the Gospel while he was living at Ephesus, and Irenaeus claims a personal link to the tradition through Polycarp, who he says knew John. That testimony is the backbone of the Church's attribution.

Modern scholarship has questioned the identification, and some scholars argue for a different John, or for a Johannine school that gathered and shaped the material of an eyewitness. The Catholic Church's liturgical and doctrinal tradition attributes the Gospel to John the Apostle, and a reader should know that the historical question is discussed rather than closed. Nothing in the Gospel's authority for the Church depends on winning that argument in a seminar room.

6. John in the Early Church

Acts shows John in the earliest days of the Church, and always alongside Peter. The two go up to the Temple at the hour of prayer and heal the man crippled from birth at the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3:1 to 10). They are arrested, questioned by the council, and ordered to stop speaking in the name of Jesus, and they answer that they cannot stop speaking of what they have seen and heard (Acts 4:19 to 20). When Samaria receives the word, the apostles send Peter and John (Acts 8:14).

Paul supplies an outside witness. Writing to the Galatians about his visit to Jerusalem, he names James, Cephas and John as those reputed to be pillars, who gave him and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship (Galatians 2:9). Around twenty years after the crucifixion, John is one of the three men who carry the authority of the Jerusalem church, and an outsider with his own agenda names him without dispute.

7. The Theologian

The fourth Gospel is built differently from the other three. Matthew, Mark and Luke share a common outline, a common stock of episodes, and a great deal of shared wording. John keeps a different itinerary, moves Jesus repeatedly between Galilee and Jerusalem, dates the crucifixion in relation to the Passover in its own way, and replaces the parables with long discourses.

It opens outside time: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1, 1:14). The claim in those lines is the doctrine of the Incarnation stated in the first paragraph, and much of the Church's later work on the Trinity and on the two natures of Christ is an unfolding of them.

John's other marks are the seven signs, from the wedding at Cana to the raising of Lazarus, and the seven sayings that begin "I am": the bread of life, the light of the world, the gate, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way and the truth and the life, and the true vine. The bread of life discourse in John 6, in which Jesus says that his flesh is true food and his blood true drink and that many of his disciples turn back at it, is the Gospel text the Church places at the centre of its teaching on the Eucharist.

The three letters of John press one test above all others. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love (1 John 4:8). Anyone who claims to love God while hating his brother is a liar (1 John 4:20). And the same writer insists on discernment: test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 John 4:1).

8. Patmos and the Book of Revelation

The author of the Book of Revelation names himself John and says that he was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus (Revelation 1:9). Patmos is a small island off the coast of Asia Minor, and the traditional understanding is that he was there in exile under Roman authority, most often placed in the reign of Domitian on the strength of a statement by Irenaeus.

The book is addressed to seven churches in Asia Minor and delivers a series of visions, including the throne room of heaven with its ceaseless worship, the scroll with seven seals, the trumpets and bowls, the woman clothed with the sun, the beast, the fall of Babylon, and the new heaven and new earth. Catholic reading has long noticed how closely the heavenly scenes track the shape of the Church's liturgy, with an altar, incense, robed elders, hymns and a Lamb standing as though slain.

The attribution of Revelation to the apostle was debated in the early Church. Dionysius of Alexandria, in the third century, argued on grounds of style and vocabulary that the author of Revelation was a different John from the author of the Gospel, and Eusebius preserves his reasoning. The Church received the book into the canon, and the liturgy associates it with the apostle. The scholarly question about a single author remains open and is worth stating rather than hiding. Our page on the Book of Revelation works through the text itself.

9. Ephesus, Old Age and Death

The oldest tradition places John's later life at Ephesus. Irenaeus writes that John, the disciple of the Lord, remained at Ephesus until the time of Trajan, and reports a story he had from Polycarp about John leaving a bathhouse when he found the heretic Cerinthus inside. Tertullian records a tradition that John was plunged into boiling oil at Rome and came out unharmed, which is the origin of the old feast of Saint John before the Latin Gate, kept on 6 May until it was dropped from the calendar in the 1969 revision.

Jerome passes on an account of the apostle in extreme old age, carried into the assembly at Ephesus, able to say only "Little children, love one another", and answering those who asked why he said nothing else that this is the Lord's command, and if it alone is kept, it is enough.

These are traditions rather than documents, and they are reported here as traditions. Their common feature is that John alone among the apostles is remembered as dying of old age rather than by execution. The Church has read that as a kind of martyrdom by duration, a witness that lasted until everyone who could contradict it was gone.

10. Feast Day, Symbol and Patronage

Feast day

The feast of Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist, is 27 December, inside the octave of Christmas, immediately after Saint Stephen on 26 December and before the Holy Innocents on 28 December. The placing is deliberate: the Church sets the birth of Christ beside a martyr who died by blood, an apostle who witnessed by a long life, and children killed on his account.

The eagle

John's symbol is the eagle, from the four living creatures of Ezekiel and Revelation, assigned to the four evangelists in early Christian tradition. The eagle was given to John because his Gospel begins by looking straight into the light, at the eternal Word, before it comes down to the manger.

Patronage and customs

John is invoked as a patron of writers, theologians, editors, publishers and booksellers, and by extension of those who work with words. The Church's blessing of wine on his feast day, still kept in many parishes and households, is connected with a legend that he was handed a poisoned cup and was unharmed, which is why he is often painted holding a chalice with a serpent in it. That is devotional custom rather than history, and it makes a good use of 27 December.

11. What to Take From St. John

• Stay when it is expensive. The disciple at the cross has no line of dialogue. He is simply present at the one hour when presence cost something. Most of the loyalty a Christian is asked for looks like that.
• Take Mary home. Christ's instruction from the cross was carried out that same hour. Catholic devotion to Mary starts there, in an act of obedience with a household attached to it, and the Rosary is the ordinary way most Catholics keep it.
• Let your temper be converted rather than suppressed. The son of thunder who wanted to burn a village became the writer who said that God is love. The energy stayed, and it was pointed somewhere else.
• Test what you are told. John, of all people, insists on it: test the spirits, because many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 John 4:1). Affection for a teacher is not evidence about his teaching.
• Do not put it off. John had the shortest possible walk to Christ, a call at the water's edge and an immediate answer. No one is told the day or the hour (Mark 13:32), and the reading, the confession and the prayer you have been meaning to begin belong to today.

12. Frequently Asked Questions

Who was St. John the Apostle?

John was a Galilean fisherman, the son of Zebedee and the brother of the apostle James, called by Jesus while he was mending nets with his father. He belonged to the small group of Peter, James and John who were present at the raising of Jairus's daughter, the Transfiguration and the agony in Gethsemane. Christian tradition identifies him with the disciple whom Jesus loved, who stood at the cross and received Mary into his home, and attributes to him the fourth Gospel, three letters and the Book of Revelation.

Why is John called the disciple whom Jesus loved?

The phrase is the fourth Gospel's own way of naming its chief witness without giving his name. It appears at the last supper, at the cross, at the empty tomb and on the shore of the lake, and the Gospel ends by saying that this disciple is testifying to these things and wrote them. The identification of that disciple with John the son of Zebedee comes from early Christian writers, above all Irenaeus in the late second century, who states that John published the Gospel at Ephesus.

Did St. John write the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation?

The Catholic Church attributes both to the apostle John, and the liturgy treats them as his. The historical question has been discussed since antiquity. Dionysius of Alexandria argued in the third century, on grounds of style and vocabulary, that the John who wrote Revelation was a different man from the evangelist, and modern scholars continue to debate the authorship of both books. The canonical authority of the texts does not depend on settling that debate.

Was St. John the only apostle who was not martyred?

That is the traditional understanding. Irenaeus reports that John lived at Ephesus into the reign of Trajan, and the tradition holds that he died there of old age. Tertullian records a story that he was thrown into boiling oil at Rome and survived, which was commemorated in the old feast of Saint John before the Latin Gate. These are early traditions rather than documented events, and this page reports them as such.

What happened to Mary after Jesus entrusted her to John?

Scripture says only that from that hour the disciple took her into his own home (John 19:27). Later traditions place her at Jerusalem and at Ephesus, and both cities have ancient claims. The Church has never defined where she lived or died, and it teaches that at the end of her earthly life she was assumed body and soul into heaven without pronouncing on the geography.

When is the feast of St. John and what is he the patron of?

His feast is 27 December, within the octave of Christmas. He is invoked as a patron of writers, theologians, editors, publishers and booksellers, and his symbol is the eagle, given to him because his Gospel opens with the eternal Word rather than with the birth. Many parishes and families keep the old custom of blessing wine on his feast day.