Three Significant Readings for the Feast of St. John
I
First Reading
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1 John 1:1-2:3 ©
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Something which has existed since the beginning,
that we have heard,
and we have seen with our own eyes;
that we have watched
and touched with our hands:
the Word, who is life –
this is our subject.
That life was made visible:
we saw it and we are giving our testimony,
telling you of the eternal life
which was with the Father and has been made visible to us.
What we have seen and heard
we are telling you
so that you too may be in union with us,
as we are in union
with the Father
and with his Son Jesus Christ.
We are writing this to you to make our own joy complete.
II
A treatise by St
Augustine on the epistle of John
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The flesh revealed Life itself
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We announce what existed from the beginning, what we have heard,
what we have seen with our own eyes, what we have touched with our own hands. Who could touch the Word with his hands
unless the Word was made flesh and lived among us?
Now this Word, whose flesh was so
real that he could be touched by human hands, began to be flesh in the Virgin
Mary’s womb; but he did not begin to exist at that moment. We know this from
what John says: What existed from the beginning. Notice how
John’s letter bears witness to his Gospel, which you just heard a moment ago: In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.
Someone might interpret the phrase
the Word of life to mean a word about Christ, rather than Christ’s body itself
which was touched by human hands. But consider what comes next:and life
itself was revealed. Christ therefore is himself the Word of life.
And how was this life revealed? It
existed from the beginning, but was not revealed to men, only to angels, who
looked upon it and feasted upon it as their own spiritual bread. But what does
Scripture say? Mankind ate the bread of angels.
Life itself was therefore revealed
in the flesh. In this way what was visible to the heart alone could become
visible also to the eye, and so heal men’s hearts. For the Word is visible to
the heart alone, while flesh is visible to bodily eyes as well. We already possessed
the means to see the flesh, but we had no means of seeing the Word. The Word
was made flesh so that we could see it, to heal the part of us by which we
could see the Word.
John continues: And we are
witnesses and we proclaim to you that eternal life which was with the Father
and has been revealed among us – one might say more simply “revealed
to us.”
We proclaim to you what we have
heard and seen. Make sure that you grasp the meaning of these words.
The disciples saw our Lord in the flesh, face to face; they heard the words he
spoke, and in turn they proclaimed the message to us. So we also have heard,
although we have not seen.
Are we then less favoured than those
who both saw and heard? If that were so, why should John add: so that
you too may have fellowship with us? They saw, and we have not seen;
yet we have fellowship with them, because we and they share the same faith.
And our fellowship is with God
the Father and Jesus Christ his Son. And we write this to you to make your joy
complete – complete in that fellowship, in that love and in that
unity.
III
Opening words of Pope Francis in “Evangelii Gaudium”
“The joy of the gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter
Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow,
inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew. In
this Exhortation I wish to encourage the Christian faithful to embark upon a
new chapter of evangelization marked by this joy, while pointing out new paths
for the Church’s journey in years to come.”
The point of St. John, St. Augustine and Pope Francis is to register
astonishment at the fact/event that God has actually and really become man. He
is the real thing. He is God and man. John felt Him and saw.
Since the divine Persons are constitutively
relational, and we are made in the image and likeness of the Second Person,
then we must become relational in order to be who we are. Hence, the
commandment to love – radically. Self-referentiality is sickness. Health is
going out of self to the peripheries. This holds in matters sexual, and in
matters economic.
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