Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today as we continue to progress through the Christmas season, two days after Christmas Day, we celebrate the occasion of the Feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist. St. John the Apostle was the beloved disciple of the Lord and was one of the Twelve Apostles, being one of the earliest ones to enter into the service of the Lord. He was once a fisherman at the Lake of Galilee together with his brother, St. James the Apostle or St. James the Greater. And what is unique about St. John among all the other Apostles is that he was likely the only one among the Apostles who have not suffered through martyrdom of the blood or the red martyrdom which all the other Apostles had suffered, but died at a very old age after many decades toiling and labouring for the Lord’s sake.

St. John was also one of the four writers of the Holy Gospels, and hence was also known as the Evangelist. He was also credited with the Epistles of St. John, addressed to the faithful people of God and as was in the Gospel that he wrote, he placed a lot of emphasis on the love of God which He has generously shown to all of us. St. John himself had witnessed many of the events that the Lord Jesus carried out and went through as he was among the few select ones to have attended to the Lord and went with Him, such as during the resurrection of the dead daughter of Jairus, the synagogue official, the moment of Transfiguration at Mount Tabor, the moment of the Lord’s Agony at the Garden of Gethsemane after the Last Supper, among others.

Then, after the death and Resurrection of the Lord, and after His Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit, St. John for a while took care of the Lord’s Mother, Mary, who had been entrusted to him by the Lord Himself, and at the same time, like the other Apostles, he was also involved in works of evangelisation and in the governance of the early Church. He went to the region of Judea and Samaria with the other Apostles to proclaim the Lord’s Good News and to establish Christian communities in all those places. He would go on to minister to the people of God and establish more Christian presence and communities in other places, and eventually, as the Lord Himself had predicted, St. John would outlive all the other Apostles, and according to Apostolic tradition, he lived to around the end of the first century, close to or around seven decades after the death of the Lord.

The Lord Jesus did mention in the Gospel that one of His disciples would not perish until the coming or the revelation of the kingdom of God, which later on would indeed come true, with St. John being the one whom the Lord entrusted with the eschatological vision or a vision about the end of times, revealing to him the events that would happen at those times before His Second Coming into this world and the Last Judgment. That happened when St. John was exiled to the island of Patmos in Greece when he was already very old in age, during the reign of the Emperor Domitian of Rome. According to some Church and Apostolic tradition, the Emperor Domitian carried out intense persecution against Christians, and many including St. John himself suffered, with the Apostle being exiled to that aforementioned island.

But it was exactly at those difficult moments, and also considering all the other persecutions and difficulties that the faithful people of God had encountered in the previous decades and which they would still endure for centuries and more afterwards, even including up to our very own present day world, that the Lord reassured us all of His love and providence, and a reassurance that if we all remain true and faithful to Him, then we shall be triumphant with God and that we shall be blessed forever, sharing in the eternal glory and the rich inheritance that He has promised and reassured to us, all these while. St. John saw all those things and recorded them in his Book of Revelations or the Apocalypse of St. John, for the knowledge of all the people of God.

St. John had witnessed many things from the time of the Lord’s ministry, and he witnessed all the moments surrounding the Lord’s Passion and death, and His glorious Resurrection from the dead just as we had heard it from today’s Gospel passage. And although he did not suffer from the same kind of martyrdom as the other Apostles of the Lord, he did indeed suffer a kind of martyrdom also known and recognised by the Church as the ‘white martyrdom’ which refers to the kind of martyrdom suffered by the people of God, who although did not face painful or bloody death, but they did face persecution and sufferings in all of its various forms. From all of these, all of us are reminded that as God’s people, as His followers and disciples, all of us must always remind ourselves to be faithful to the Lord.

We should always strive to put the Lord at the centre and as the focus of our whole lives, our whole existence and in all of the things that we do in life. In our Christmas celebration, festivities and all that we do in this joyful Christmas season, all of us are reminded to be ever always faithful to God and to show our true faith in Him in how we celebrate this Christmas occasion so that in all that we say and do, we will always glorify God by our every words, actions, and deeds, and indeed by our whole lives and examples. We must follow in the footsteps of St. John, Holy Apostle and Evangelist, whose whole life had been thoroughly dedicated to the service of God and His people. We must realise that the works that the Lord had entrusted to His Church and Apostles are far from being done, and it is now up to all of us to continue them.

Let us all therefore renew our commitment and desire to serve the Lord ever more faithfully in each and every moments of our lives, so that by our every moments in life, in everything that we carry out, we will continue to be good examples and the faithful, worthy and shining beacons of God’s Light and Hope in our darkened world today, and the bearers of His Love and compassion to all the people around us. May all of those who encounter us and witness our lives and examples be touched by God and His love, and be called to be His good and worthy followers as well, together with each one of us, now and always. Amen.