Radhika Sharda
St. Venantius Fortunatus Writing Group
Years before my conversion to the faith, I encountered a painting by the Greek painter El Greco that was seared into my memory: his portrait of St. John the Apostle. It showed a youth holding a chalice in one hand, gesturing toward it with the other, and all the while gazing at the viewer with great intentness, as if offering some deep secret to the soul. I knew very little about the Christian faith in those days, yet this figure of the young St. John fascinated me. The shimmering hues of his face and his robes imbued the piece with supernatural beauty.
This year I have placed a small copy of this painting in my prayer corner. Looking upon this image of the young St. John has suffused my prayer time with a spirit of both immediacy and transcendence. Put simply, to come close to John is to come tangibly close to Christ. The more I have reflected upon this saint, the beloved disciple, the more I come to find in him a whole treasury of insight.
John was the only Apostle who remained with Jesus at the cross. While the other disciples had fled, John alone remained to accompany Jesus through his Passion and Death. It is no easy thing to witness the suffering of one’s master, from his arrest and trial, to the scourging, and finally to the Crucifixion, yet somehow John stood fast to the very end. As we place ourselves in the scene with John, we find ourselves right there at the foot of the cross, close enough to touch the pierced feet of our Lord and catch drops of his blood spilling to the earth. Such meditations bring us searingly close to not only the visceral reality of the Passion, but even deeper into the secrets of the Paschal Mystery.
What did John see, think, and feel as he stood there at the cross? The experience of watching the Lord suffer and die must have transformed John profoundly. Though John likely could not grasp the immensity of what was happening, he must have come to perceive, somewhere beyond the realm of what could be expressed, that Jesus was offering himself up freely. God was pouring forth his very Word on the cross, and the Word was Love. In this vein, many medieval altarpieces and paintings depict the patron at one side of the cross, with John and the women at the other, all contemplating the mystery of Christ’s sacrifice. To adore Christ on the cross with John and the others draws us into a wellspring of prayer.
John invites us into a transcendent understanding of Christ. John knew him intimately as a friend but at the same time came to recognize in him someone far more than anyone had ever expected in the Messiah. This Jesus of Nazareth was more than priest or prophet; he was the Son of the living God. It is for this reason that John’s Gospel has taken on the symbol of the eagle, for again and again he soars beyond the plane of physical things to the heavens, attesting to the divine, eternal nature of Christ.
One could spend a lifetime of prayer on the prologue to John’s Gospel. Deep, rich insights into the nature of God and his relationship with man permeate the opening lines: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. From the first words, John leads us to the mountaintop, allowing us to meditate upon God as the Author of life, revealed in Christ as the divine Word. The Greek rendering, Logos, invokes the pattern and meaning which undergirds all of reality. To pray in this space is to plumb the depths of reality and to ascend to the heavens. Such is the unique gift of John’s Gospel. Even a nonbeliever who opens up to these remarkable words from the prologue finds himself in a sublime place brimming with meaning, life, and eternity. I am convinced that it was through the profound experience of standing before Christ at the cross that John sweeps us aloft to such heights of understanding in his Gospel.
Perhaps most notably, John reveals to us that the life of the Christian is a life of belovedness. Throughout his Gospel, he is described as the “beloved disciple,” not to point to himself but to allow each of us to place ourselves right in his spot in the story. I have long been struck by the scene during the Last Supper in which he lays his head tenderly against the breast of Christ. It is a singular icon of pure-hearted love. Do we have such honesty, such simplicity of heart in our prayer time with the Lord? What would it be like to lay oneself against the breast of Jesus? I have often taken this image to prayer. Allowing myself to come this close to the Lord, to lay my head against his heart, has always kindled my awareness of his love for me.
The gift of coming close to John is that he brings us close to Christ. Befriending John has infused my prayer time with an ability to gaze upon the Lord through a lens of both intimacy and majesty; to see in him both the deep friend of one’s heart, as well as the Logos governing all of reality. Perhaps most importantly, he invites each of us to step into his place as the beloved disciple. What more is there in the Christian life than to abide in the heart of Christ, he who has loved us from the beginning?