Saint John the Apostle

John was the son of Zebedee and the younger brother of Saint James the Greater, a fisherman of Galilee called by Jesus from his father’s boat. With Peter and James he witnessed the raising of Jairus’s daughter, the Transfiguration and the agony in the garden.

The Church has always identified him with “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” who leaned on the Lord’s breast at the Last Supper. He alone of the Twelve stood at the foot of the cross, and there the dying Jesus said to his mother, “Woman, behold thy son,” and to him, “Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own” (John 19). On Easter morning he outran Peter to the empty tomb, “and he saw, and believed” (John 20).

After Pentecost he appears beside Peter in Jerusalem, and Paul names him as one of the “pillars” of the Church there. Tradition says he later lived at Ephesus with the Blessed Virgin, was exiled for a time to the island of Patmos, and died at Ephesus in great old age around the year 100. He was the only one of the Twelve not to die a martyr.

To him the Church attributes the fourth Gospel, which begins “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1), three letters, and the Book of Revelation. Because his Gospel soars to the heights of the mystery of Christ, his emblem is the eagle. Saint Jerome tells that in his last years, too weak to preach, he would only say to his people, “Little children, love one another.”