Sermon
XXI:
"The
Disciple Whom Jesus Loved"
The eagle is the king of birds; he is the most powerful, flies the highest, apparently comes in fact from the skies. He has the sharpest and most penetrating eye and not only soars himself to the sun, but takes his young to the sun in order to accustom them to its rays and to warm them. For this reason the eagle is a spiritual symbol of omnipotence and omniscience, in a word, a symbol of the Divine Spirit. In the second book of Moses, the Lord says: "You have seen how I have born you on wings of the eagle and have brought you to Me.""But they that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall take wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint."-----ISAIAS 11, 31
But since the Spirit of God is essentially the Spirit of love, and in the words of the Holy Fathers God has poured forth the fullness of His Spirit into the heart of the beloved disciple John, the eagle has been given to the Evangelist John as his symbol, for he did not soar alone in spirit to the sun of eternal love, but endeavored to bring all his brethren, and mankind with him to warm their hearts with Divine love, so that the words of the prophet were verified in him: "Those who love the Lord receive new strength, that they may soar aloft like the eagle."
On the banks of the fresh waters of the Tiberian Sea, which abounded with fish, lived a family by the name Zebedaeus, who had two sons, James and John. They were fishermen by trade, John, the younger was like an angel on whose countenance, as St. Augustine says, was reflected that Divine beauteous harmony, which a pure soul produces in a chaste body. He was about twenty-five years old and was mending the nets in his boat, when the Savior approached him, and called him to Him. John obeyed at once, left all and followed the Lord. He became an Apostle of the Lord and nevermore departed from Him. He accompanied his Lord and Master to Mount Olivet, and when Judas betrayed his Master, John followed Him to the court of the high priest, and accompanied Him to Calvary, and to him I turn my heart and my thoughts tonight.
John was destined to be, through all ages, and unto all nations, a type of what the true Christian man, the friend of Christ, must be; a true representative of the part he must play, in the sacrifice that from time to time he must make, to test the strength and tenderness of his love. He was young and beautiful, but did not flinch from his Master and Lord in that hour of suffering; he walked by His side; he shared in the reproaches that were showered upon the head of the Son of God, and took his share of the grief and shame of that terrible morning of Good Friday. The Master permitted him to be there, that He might, as it were, lean upon the strength of his manhood and the fearlessness of his love. Behold him, as, with the virginal eyes, he looks up as a man to his fellowman on the Cross! Behold him as he seems to say: "O Master! O Lover of my soul and heart! Can I relieve You of a single sorrow by taking it up and making it my own?"
This was John. Consider who he was and what he was.
Three graces surrounded him as he stood at the foot of the Cross. Three Divine gifts formed a halo of heavenly light around his head. They were the grace of Christian purity, the grace of Divine love, and the manliness of the bravery that despises the world, when it is a question of giving testimony of love and of fidelity to his God and his Savior,-----three noble gifts, with which the world is so ill-supplied today!
The virtue of angelic purity Christ our Lord came to establish upon earth: This virtue did He lay as the foundation of His Church in a chaste and virginal priesthood, preserving the integrity of the soul in the purity of the body. This virtue belonged to St. John, the "Disciple of Love"; and it belonged to him in its highest phase; for as the Fathers and notably St. Peter Damascus tell us, in John the Evangelist from the cradle to the grave, no thought of human love ever flashed through his mind. No angry uprising of human passion ever disturbed the equable nature of his Heavenly tempered soul and body. He was the youngest of all the Apostles; and he was little more than a youth when the virgin-creating eyes of Christ fell upon him, and Christ looked upon him and saw a virginal body, fair and beautiful in its translucent purity and innocence. He the Creator and Redeemer saw a soul, pure and bright and unstained; a soul just opening into manhood, and in the full possession of all its powers; and a tender, yet most pure heart unfolded itself, even as the lily bursts forth and unfolds its white leaves to gather in its cup the dews of heaven, like diamond drops in its heart of purest whiteness. So did our Lord behold the fair soul of John. Jesus Christ spoke in the virgin ear the words of invitation; and into that virgin soul He dropped those graces of apostleship and of love and of tenderness and of strength, that lying there amongst those petals of glory, brought forth in the soul of the young man all that was radiant of Christ-like virtue. A virgin, that is to say, one who never let a thought of his mind, nor an affection of his heart stray from the highest form of Divine love; thus was he before he had beheld the face of his Redeemer. But when to that virginal purity, which naturally seeks the love of God in its highest form, that God Himself visible in the shape of the Sacred Humanity of our Lord, when the virgin's King, the Prince and the Leader of the virgin's choir in Heaven, presented Himself to the eyes of the young Apostle, oh, then, with the instinct of purity his heart seemed to go forth from him and to seek the heart of Christ. And so it was for three years, under the purifying eyes of our Lord. He lived for three years in the most intimate communication of love with his Master; distinguished from all other Apostles, of whom we do not know that every one of them was a virgin, but only John; distinguished from them by being admitted, through his privileged virginal purity, into the inner chambers of the heart of Christ. Thus when our Lord appeared to the Apostles upon the waters all the others shrank from Him terrified; and they said to one another, "It is a ghost! it is an apparition." John looked and instantly recognized his Master, and said to Peter: "Fear not; It is the Lord!" Whereupon St. Jerome says: "What eyes were those of John, that could see that which others could not see? Oh, it was the eye of a virgin recognizing a virgin"! So it was that a certain tacit privilege was granted to John, as is seen in the conduct of the Apostles themselves. Peter was certainly honored above all others by getting precedence and supremacy; by being appointed the vicar and representative of his Master; in other words, "the Head of the Apostles."
Nay more, the heart of Peter was sounded to the very depths of its capacity and of its love, before Christ our Lord appointed him as His representative. Three times did He ask him, "Lovest thou Me? Again in the presence of John, Lovest thou Me more than these?" More than these; more than the men who are present before me, and of whom I speak to you. And Peter was confirmed in that hour, and rose by Divine grace to a height in the sight of his Divine Master, greater than any ever attained by man. It is not the heart of the man loving the Lord, but, it is the heart of the Lord loving the man. So Peter was called upon to love his Lord more than the others. But the tenderest love of his Divine Master was the privilege of John. He was the disciple "whom Jesus loved." And did his fellow Apostles know it? What a privilege was not that which was given to John at the Last Supper because of his virginal purity? There was the Master, and there were the disciples around Him. There was the man whom He had destined to be His first vicar,-----the representative of His power and head of His followers. Did Peter get first place? No! The first place of love nearest to the Sacred Heart was the privilege of John. And Oh! the ineffable dignity vouchsafed by Our Savior to His virgin friend,-----the head of the disciple was laid upon the breast of the Master, and the human ear of John heard the pulsations of the virginal Heart of Christ, the Lord of Heaven and earth. Between these two in life, you may easily see in this and other such traits recorded in the Gospel between these two, the Master and the disciple whom He loved, there was silent intercommunion,-----an intensity of tender love of which the other Apostles seem not to have known. Out of this very purity of John sprang the love of his Divine Master. It was after His Resurrection that our Lord asked Peter, "Dost thou love Me more than these?" Before the suffering of the Son of God, Peter not yet confirmed in love, wavered in his allegiance and denied his Master: John's love knew no change. Peter's love had first to be humbled, and purified by tears, and his heart broken by contrition before he was able to assert: "Lord, Thou knowest all things: Thou knowest that I love thee!" But in the love of St. John we find an undoubting, an unchanging love. What his Master was to him in the hour of His glory, the same was He in the hour of His shame. He beheld his Lord, shining on the summit of Tabor on the day of His Transfiguration: yet he loved Him as dearly when he beheld Him covered with shame and confusion on the Cross! What was the nature of that love?
Oh, my friends, think what was the nature of that love! It had taken possession of a mighty but an empty heart. Mighty in its capacity of love is the heart of man-----the heart of the young man-----the heart of the ingenious, talented and enlightened youth. Would you know of how much this heart is capable? Behold it in the Saints of the Catholic Church. Behold it in every man who gives his heart to God wholly and entirely. Behold it even in the sacrifices that young hearts make when they are filled with merely human love. Behold it in the sacrifice of life, of health, of everything which a man has, which is made upon the altar of love, even when human love has taken the base, revolting form of impurity. But measure, if you can, the ardor of pure love of Jesus Christ. I address the heart of the young man, and he cannot see it. The truth lies here, that the most licentious and self-indulgent sinner on the face of the earth, has never known in the indulgence of his wildest excesses, the full contentment, the complete enjoyment, the mighty faculty of love which is in the heart of man, and which God alone can satisfy.
Such was the heart which our Lord called to Him. Such was the heart of John. It was a capacious heart. It was the heart of a young man. It was empty. No human love there. No previous affection came in to cross or counteract the designs of God in the least degree, or to take possession of even the remotest comer of that heart. Then finding it thus empty in its purity, thus capacious in its nature, the Son of God filled the heart of the young Apostle with His love. Oh, it was the rarest, the grandest friendship that bound together two virgin hearts, the heart of the beloved disciple, John; the grand virgin love which absorbed John's affections, filling his young heart and intellect with the beauty and the highest appreciation of his Lord and Master, filling his heart with the charms ineffable produced by the sight of the face of the Holy One. He looked upon the beauty of that Sacred and Divine Humanity; and he saw with the penetrating eyes of the intellect the fullness of the Divinity which flashed upon him. He had listened to the words of the Divine Master, and sweeter were they than the music which he had heard in Heaven, and which he describes in the Apocalypse, where he says: "I heard the sound of many voices, and of harpers harping upon many harps." Far sweeter than the echoes of Heaven, that descended into his soul on the Isle of Patmos, was the noble, manly voice of his Lord and Master, now pouring forth blessings upon the poor, now telling those who sorrow that they shall one day be comforted, now whispering to the widow of Naim, "Weep no more," now telling the penitent Magdalen, "Thy sins are forgiven thee, because thou hast loved much," now thundering in the Temple of Jerusalem, until the very walls resounded to the God-like voice of Him Who said: "It is written that My house is a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves"; it was still the loftiest music and melody, the harmonious roll of the voice of God, as it fell on the charmed ears of the enraptured Evangelist, the young man who followed his Master and fed his soul upon that Divine love. Out of this Divine love sprang the inseparable fellowship that bound him to Christ. Not for an instant was he voluntarily absent from his Master's side. Not for an instant did he separate himself from the immediate society of his Lord. And herein lay the secret of his love; for love, be it human or Divine, craves for union, and lives in the sight and in the conversation of the object of its affection. Consequently, of all the Apostles John was the one who was always clinging about his Master, always trying to be near Him, always trying to catch the loving eyes of Christ in every glance. This was the light of his brightness, the Divine wisdom that animated him.
How distinct is the action of St. John in the hour of the Passion from that of St. Peter: " Peter," He says, "before the cock crows thou wilt deny Me thrice." No wonder the Master's voice struck terror in the heart of the Apostle. And yet, strange to say, it did not make him prudent, or cautious. When our Lord was taken prisoner, the Evangelist expressly tells us that Peter followed Him. Followed Him? Indeed he followed him; but he followed Him afar off. He waited on the outskirts of the crowd. He tried to conceal his features, lest any man might lay hold on him, and make him a prisoner, as the friend of the Redeemer. He began to be afraid of the danger of acknowledging himself to be the servant of such a Master. He began to think of himself, when every thought of his mind and every energy of his heart should have been concentrated upon his Lord. He followed Him; but at some distance. John wanted to take the Master's hand, even when bound by the thorns, that he might receive the vivifying touch of contact with Christ. John wanted to hear every word that might be said, whether it was for or against him, wanted to feast his eyes upon every object which engaged the attention of his Lord, and by Whose look it was irradiated-----a type, indeed, of a class of Christian men seeking the society and presence of his Master, and strengthened by their seeking and that presence. He is the type of the man who goes frequently to Holy Communion, preparing himself by a good confession, and laying the basis of a Sacramental union with God, that becomes a large element of his life, the man who goes to the altar every month, the man who is familiar with Christ and who enters somewhat into the inner chambers of that Sacred Heart of infinite love; the man who knows what those few moments of rapture are which are reserved for the pure; for those who not only serve God, but serve Him lovingly and well. Those are the men who walk in the footsteps of John; those are his representatives. Peter is represented by the men who go to Communion once a year-----going at Easter and then returning to the world again. God grant that neither the world, nor the flesh, nor the devil will take possession of the days, or weeks, or years of the rest of his life, of him who gives once a year perhaps an hour or two to earnest communion with God, and for all the rest only a passing consideration, flashing momentarily across the current of his life. And what was the consequence? John went up to Calvary and took the proudest place that ever was given to man. Peter met in the outer hall a servant maid, and she said to him, "Thou also wast with Jesus of Nazareth." The moment that the child's voice fell upon his ear, he denied his Master, and he swore an oath that he did not know Him.
Now we come to the third grand attribute of John: and it is to this, my friends, that I would call your attention especially. Tender as the love of this man was for his Master, his Friend, mark how strongly and how manly it was, at the same time. He does not stand aside. He will allow no soldier, or guard, or executioner, to thrust him aside, or put him away from His Master. He stands by the Master's side, when He stood before His accusers in the Praetorium of Pilate. He comes out. John receives Him into his arms, when, fainting from loss of blood, He turns surrounded by soldiers from the terrific scene of His scourging; and when the Cross is laid upon the shoulders of the Redeemer, with the crowd of citizens around him, at His right hand, so close that he might lean upon him if He would, is the manly form of John the Evangelist. Oh, think of the love that was in his heart, and the depth of his sorrow, when he saw his Lord, his Master, his Friend, his only Love, reduced to so terrible a state of woe, of misery and of weakness! This was the condition of the Lord when they laid the heavy Cross upon His shoulders. How the Apostle of love would have taken that painful and terrible crown, with its thorns, from the brow to which they adhered, and set the thorns upon his own head, if they had only been satisfied to let him bear the pains and the sufferings of his Master and his God! How anxious must he have been to take the load that was placed upon the unwilling shoulders of Simon of Cyrene! How he must have envied the man who lifted the Cross off the bleeding shoulders of the Divine Victim, and set it upon his own strong shoulders, and bore it alone up the steep side of Calvary! With what gratitude must the Apostle have looked upon the face of Veronica, who, with eyes streaming with tears, and on bended knees, upheld the cloth on which the Savior imprinted the marks of His DivIne Countenance! Yet who was this man who takes the place of shame? Who is this man who is willing to assume all the opprobrium and all the penalty that follows upon it? He is the only one of the twelve Apostles who is publicly known. We read in the Gospel that all the Apostles were poor men, taken out of the crowd by our Lord. The only one amongst them who had made some mark, who was noted, who was remembered for something or other, was John. And by whom was he known? He was known, says the Evangelist, to the High Priest. He was so well known to him, and to his guards, and to his officers, and to his fellow priests that when our Lord was in the house of Annas, John entered as a matter of course; and when Peter, with the rest was shut out, all that John had to do was to speak a word to the doorkeeper and bring in Peter. He was well known to the chief magistrates-----well known to the chief senators-----well known to the men in power. "Oh, John! be prudent! Remember that you are a noted man, so that you will be set down by the men in power, for shame perhaps, or indignity, or even death, if you are seen with Jesus Christ in this hour. Consult your own interests. Do not be rash. There is no knowing what may happen to you." Oh, this is the language of the world. This is the language which we hear day after day. "Prudence and Caution:" "No necessity to show our religion!" "No necessity to be constantly unfurling the banner on which the Cross of Christ is depicted-----the Cross on which He died to save the souls of men." No necessity of all this. Let us go peacefully with the world! Let us worship in secret. Let us go on Sunday to Mass quietly; and let the world know nothing about it. Oh, how noble the answer of him whom all the world knew! How noble the soul of him who stood by the Lord when he knew that he was a marked man, and that sooner or later his fidelity on that Good Friday morning would bring him into trouble! Oh, glorious the man who knew that he was compromising himself! That he was placing his character, his liberty, his very life in jeopardy! That he was losing himself in the esteem of those worldly men who thought they were doing a wise, a proper, a prudent thing when they sent the Lord to be crucified! He stands by his Master. He says in the face of this whole world, "Whoever is His enemy, I am His friend. Whatever is His position today, I am His creature; and I recognize Him as my God!" And so he trod, step by step, with the fainting Redeemer, up the rugged sides of Calvary. We know not what words of love and strong manly sympathy he may have poured into the afflicted ear of Christ. We know not how much the drooping Humanity of our Lord may have been strengthened and cheered in that sad hour by the presence of the faithful and loving John! Have you ever been in great affliction, my friends? Has sorrow ever come upon you with a crushing and an overwhelming weight? Have you ever lacked heart and power in great difficulty and seen no escape from the crushing weight of anxiety that was breaking your heart? Do you not know what it is to have even one friend-----one friend on whom you can rely with perfect and implicit confidence-----one friend who, you know, believes in you and loves you and whose love is as strong as life? One friend who, you know, will uphold you even if the world be against you? Such was the comfort, such the consolation that it was the Evangelist's privilege to pay to our Lord on Calvary. No human prudence or argument dissuaded him. He thought it -----and he thought rightly,-----the supreme wisdom to defy, to despise, and to trample upon the world, when that world was crucifying his Lord and Master. Highest type of man, saying from out of the depths of his own conscience, "I am above the world!" Let every man ask himself this night, and answer the question to his own soul: "Do I imitate the purity, do I imitate the love, do I imitate the courage or the bravery of this man, of whom it is said that he was, "the disciple whom Jesus loved"! He got his reward. He got his reward exceedingly great. Oh, how little did he know, great as his love was, how little did he know of the crowning glory that was reserved to him at the foot of the Cross. How his heart must have throbbed within him with the liveliest emotions of delight, mingled in a stormy confusion with the greatness of his sorrow, when, from the lips of his dying Master, he received the command: "Son behold thy Mother!"-----and with eyes dimmed with tears of anguish and of love did he cast his most pure, most loving, and most reverential glance upon the forlorn Mother of the dying Son! What was his ecstasy when he heard the voice of his dying Master say to Mary: "Mother look to John, My brother, My friend! Take him for thy son!" To John He said: "Son, I am going away, I am leaving this woman, My Mother, the most desolate of all creatures; but to you I leave her, take her for your Mother, My beloved disciple." John advanced one step-----the type and prototype of the new man redeemed by our Lord-----the man whose glory it was to be-----that he was Mary's Son! He advances a step until he comes right in front of the Cross and approaches Mary, the Mother, in the midst of her sorrow, and flings himself into her arms. And the newly found son embraces his Heavenly Mother, whilst from the crucified Lord the drops of Blood fall down upon them and cement the union between His Church and His holy Mother, in which the mystery of the Incarnation is made perfect by completest adoption and brotherhood with the Son of God.
The scene of Calvary I will not touch upon or describe. The slowly passing minutes of pain, of anguish, and of agony that stretched out these terrible three hours of incessant suffering, of these I will not speak. But when the scene was over, when the Lord of Glory and of Love sent forth His last cry, when the terrified heart of the Virgin throbbed with alarm as she saw the centurion draw his terrible lance and thrust it through the side of her Divine Son; when all this was over and when our Lord was taken down from the Cross, and His body placed in Mary's arms after she had washed away the blood stains with her tears, after she had taken the crown of thorns from His brow, and when they laid Him in the tomb,-----the desolate Mother put her hands into those of her newly found child, St. John, and with him returned to Jerusalem. The glorious title of "Child of Mary" was now his: and with this precious gift of the dying Redeemer he rejoiced in Mary's society, and in Mary's love. The Blessed Virgin was then, according to tradition, in her forty-ninth year. During the twelve years that she survived with John, she was mostly in Jerusalem, whilst he preached in Ephesus, one of the cities of Asia Minor, and founded there a church and held the chair as its first Apostle and Bishop. He founded a church at Philippi, and a church at Thessalonica, and many of the churches in Asia Minor. His whole life, for seventy years after the death of his Divine Lord, was spent in the propagation of the Gospel and in the establishing of the Church. But for twelve years more the Virgin was with him, in his house, tenderly surrounding him with the comfort that care could supply. Oh, think of the raptures of his household! Every glance of her virginal eyes upon him reminded her of Him Who was gone, for John was like his Divine Master. It was that wonderful resemblance to Christ which the highest form of grace brings out on men. Picture to yourselves, if you can, that life at Ephesus when the Apostle, worn down by his Apostolic preaching, fatigued and wearied from his constantly proclaiming the victory and the love of the Redeemer, returned to the house and sat down, whilst Mary with her tender hand wiped the sweat from his brow, and these two, sitting together, spoke of the Lord and of the mysteries of the life in Nazareth; and from Mary's lips he heard the mysteries of the thirty years of love in the lowly house at Nazareth, and of how Joseph had died and Jesus had labored for her in his stead. From Mary's lips he heard the secrets, the wonderful secrets of her Divine Son, until filled with inspiration and rising to the grandest and most glorious heights of Divinely inspired thought, he proclaimed the Gospel that begins with the wonderful words: "In the beginning was the Word,"----- denoting and pointing back to the eternity of the Son of God. Picture to yourselves, if you can, how Mary poured out to John, years after the death of our Lord, her words of gratitude to him for the care with which he surrounded her,-----and of all her gratitude to him for all that he had done in consoling and upholding her Divine Child in the hour of His sorrow! Oh, this surpasses all contemplation. Next to that mystery of Divine love, the life in Nazareth with her own Child, comes the life which she lived in Ephesus with her second, her adopted son, John, the Evangelist. He passes to Heaven among the virgins, says St. Peter Damien, first in glory and first in love, enshrined today in the brightest light that surrounds the virgins' choirs of Heaven. Now he sings the songs of angelic joy and of love; and he leaves to you and to me,-----as he stands, and as we contemplate him upon the hill of Calvary-----the grand and instructive lesson of how the Christian man is to behave towards his Lord and his God: in Christian purity, in the Christ-given strength of Divine love: which trampling under foot all mere human respect, lives and glories in the friendship of God and in the possession of His holy faith, and the practice of His holy religion -----not blushing for Him before man; and thus gaining the reward of Him Who says: "And he that confesses Me before men, the same will I confess before My Father Who is in Heaven." Amen. 
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