Catholic commentaries on the Gospel of St. John. The preeminence of this Gospel.
Discussion of who wrote this Gospel -- Who was the beloved disciple?
See handout below the audio recording.
Listen online [here]!
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Catholic Commentary on
the Gospel of St John
Following the great
saints and Catholic theologians
Session 1 – Who wrote
this Gospel? Who was St John?
Although
it is doubted by many of the heretics of the modern day, and even by some
Catholics, there can be no doubt that this book was written by St. John the
Beloved, the Apostle who wrote also three letters bearing his name and the book
of the Apocalypse (Revelation).
John
21:24 (speaking of the beloved disciple) – “This is that disciple who giveth
testimony of these things, and hath written these things; and we know that his
testimony is true.”
John
19:35 (at the foot of the Cross after the side of Christ has been pierced) – “And
he that saw it, hath given testimony, and his testimony is true. And he knoweth
that he saith true; that you also may believe.”
The Disciple
whom Jesus loved – This phrase is used only in St. John’s Gospel.
John
13:23 (last Supper), 19:26 (foot of the Cross), 20:2 (empty tomb), 21:7 (sea of
Tiberius), 21:20 (along the shore of the sea)
This
disciple and St Peter are close – John 1:41 (St. Andrew and the other disciple
bring Peter to Jesus),13:24 (at the Last Supper), 18:15 (in the court of
Caiaphas), 20:2-8 (the empty tomb), 21:7 (sea of Tiberius), 21:20-24 (along the
shore of the sea)
Sts.
Peter and John in Acts – Acts 3 (healing of lame beggar), Acts 4 (before the
Sanhedrin), Acts 8:14ff (sent to Samaria)
Notice
also that St. John the Apostle is never named in the Gospel. All this evidence
leads us to conclude that the beloved disciple is St. John, which means that
John is the author of this Gospel.
What about the “Johannine
community” of which the modernists speak? A community of believers who wrote the Gospel
together as a group, rather than a single individual who was an Apostle.
We
reply that a community of believers was involved, hear the account of St.
Jerome: “Last was John, the Apostle and Evangelist, whom Jesus loved the best,
who lay on the Lord’s bosom, and drank of the purest streams of His doctrines.
When he was in Asia, at a time when the seeds of the heresies of Cerinthus,
Ebion and the rest, who denied that Christ had come in the flesh, those whom in
his Epistle he calls Antichrists, and whom the Apostle Paul frequently refutes,
he was constrained by well nigh all the bishops who were at that time in Asia,
and by the deputies of many other Churches, to write of the deep things of the
Divinity of our Saviour, and to ‘break through,’ as it were, to the Word of God
by a kind of happy temerity. Whence also we are told in ecclesiastical history
that when he was urged by the brethren to write, he agreed to do so, on
condition that they should all fast, and pray to God in common. When the fast
was ended, being filled with the power of revelation, he burst forth with the
preface coming straight from above, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.”
(Commentary on Matthew) Others add that St. John’s beginning to write was
preceded by lightnings and thunderings, as though he had been another Moses,
who thus received the Law of God. (cf. Exodus 19)
Who was St. John? He is the brother of James
the Greater. He is also the son Zebedee and Salome, making him the nephew of
St. James the Less and Jude Thaddeus, and the grandson of St. Cleophas (Alphaeus).
This makes him to be a distant relative of Jesus, since he is the son of the
Lord’s cousin Salome. All this is the
general consensus of the Fathers and great saints.
St. John suffered an
interior martyrdom greater than all the other Apostles:
Fr.
Cornelius a’ Lapide writes of the “martyrdom” of St. John – (cf. Mark 10:35-40,
especially verses 38-39, “And Jesus said to them: You know not what you ask.
Can you drink of the chalice that I drink of: or be baptized with the baptism
wherewith I am baptized? But they said to him: We can. And Jesus saith to them:
You shall indeed drink of the chalice that I drink of: and with the baptism
wherewith I am baptized, you shall be baptized.”)
“S.
John also drank of this cup when he was plunged by Domitian, at Rome, before
the Latin Gate, into a cauldron of boiling oil, and came forth renewed in
strength; so that by a new miracle he was a martyr by living rather by dying.
“Again,
not only Prochorus, S. John’s disciple, in his Life of S. John (the truth of
which is rightly suspected by Baronius), but also S. Isidore declares that S.
John really drank the cup of poison, but that he also drank it without harm;
whence also he is generally represented in pictures holding a cup. And, lastly,
we may say that the whole life of S. John was a continual martyrdom, for he
lived a very long time after all the Apostles, to the year of our Lord 101; and
this long absence from Christ, his beloved—after Whom he was continually
longing—was a lengthened martyrdom to him, as it was also to the Blessed
Virgin, to whom he had been given as a son by Christ on the Cross.
“Again,
S. John underwent a special martyrdom while he stood with the Blessed Virgin by
the Cross on Mount Calvary, and beheld Christ—his Life, Whom he loved more than
his own life—suffering the bitter pains of the Cross for three hours.”
Again, Fr. Cornelius a
Lapide writes of the virtues of St. John:
“S.
John alone was counted worthy to win the laurels of all saints. For he is in
very deed a theologian, or rather the prince of theologians. The same is an
apostle, a prophet and an evangelist. The same is a priest, a bishop, a high
priest, a virgin, and a martyr. That S. John always remained a virgin is
asserted by all the ancient writers, expressly by Tertullian (Lib. de monogam.)
and S. Jerome (Lib. 1 contra. Jovin.). To him therefore as a virgin Christ from
His cross commended His Virgin Mother. For “blessed are the clean in heart, for
they shall see God,” as the Truth Itself declares.
“The
Only Begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, made known to this His
most chaste and beloved friend, who reclined upon His breast, the hidden things
and sacraments of the Divinity, which had been kept-secret from the foundation
of the world. John hath declared the same to us, as a son of thunder,
thundering and lightening the whole world with the Deity of the Word. As with a
flaming thunderbolt “he hath given shine to the world;” and with the fire of
love he hath inflamed it. Let that speech of Christ, His longest and His last,
bear witness, which He made after supper (S. John xiii. &c.), which
breathes of nothing but the ardour of Divine love.”
