27 December 2022 - homily for the Feast of St John Apostle and Evangelist - John 20:1-8

     We celebrate many different saints during this first week of Christmas.  Yesterday was the feast day of St Stephen, the first martyr of the early Church. Later in the week, we commemorate the feast of the Holy Innocents and the feast of the Holy Family.  Today, with Christmas joy in our hearts, we celebrate the feast St John Apostle and Evangelist. John and his brother James were called the Sons of Thunder by Jesus, I assume due to their very fiery and larger-than-life personalities. John and James were the sons of Zebedee.  It is also believed that their mother was Mary of Salome, the sister of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so John the Evangelist would have been the first cousin of Jesus. James and John were fishermen from Galilee who were called to become disciples of Christ and to become fishers of men. 

     Tradition has it that John's Gospel has been traced to him, probably through a community that tied its identity and its spirituality to John. Of the twelve apostles, John is the only one described in the Gospels as being present at Christ's crucifixion.  Jesus gave him Mary to protect, where tradition holds that they both lived in Ephesus in present-day Turkey. In that place today, there is a location of a house where tradition holds that Mary and John lived.  We hear from the 20th chapter of John’s Gospel of how John arrived at the tomb with Peter after the apostles had been alerted by Mary Magdalene of the empty tomb. Tradition holds that John was the last of the apostles to pass away.  He is probably the only apostle to die a natural death, with all the other apostles having been martyred.  However, Tradition also holds that John was banished into exile in an era of persecution by Roman Emperor Domitian to the Isle of Patmos where he possibly wrote the book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament. We heard the beginning of John's Gospel at the Mass on Christmas day.  The beginning of the first chapter of John's Gospel does not contain the traditional story of Christ's birth in a humble stable in Bethlehem, but rather a description of Jesus' entrance into the world in a very poetic and theological way, as the word of God that existed from the very beginning. 

      As we celebrate the feast day of one of the first apostles and one of the Evangelists today in this holy season of Christmas, a season dedicated to the celebration of the birth of our savior, may we unite our prayers with John and with the other apostles who passed down the faith to us.