Daily Gospel Reflection
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December 27, 2021
On the first day of the week,
Mary Magdalene ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we do not know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
When my oldest daughter was in second grade, we had an interaction that resulted in my grounding her for the remainder of the day. It all started when she refused to practice the violin. Our disagreement escalated. Her facial expression appeared angry and defiant; I was sure I had to shut that down immediately. After all, if I didn’t establish good behavior when she was seven, what would happen when she was 17?
About a year later, I watched that same expression creep across her face. This time it was caused by sad news. I realized at that moment that the “defiant” look I thought I’d witnessed was the way she looked when she was trying hard to hold back tears. It was nothing to do with recalcitrance or contrariness and everything to do with her not wanting to break down and cry.
That moment of clarity was incredibly humbling. I realized how badly I’d misread her—this girl I loved with my whole heart. How could my initial interpretation of her expression be so… wrong?
When Mary Magdalen saw the empty tomb, her first impression was that someone had taken the Lord’s body, but she didn’t respond with haste. She stayed at the tomb and didn’t walk away. She wept. She sat with her grief. When Jesus appeared, she saw the truth in a new way.
I seem to have to relearn regularly that I don’t always have all the facts —that it sometimes takes time to understand the bigger story taking place around me.
May we each learn to sit with our discomfort, to wait for the rest of the story to unfold. May we rely on humility and patience. We may struggle, but let us recognize it is the only way to move forward as loving parents, spouses, citizens, and people of faith.
Prayer
Lord, John the apostle “saw and believed” when he entered the empty tomb. His faith told him that you had indeed risen from the dead. Assist us, Lord, when our faith is weak and we do not know what to believe. Help us to know that you have indeed risen and are now with us always. Amen.
Saint of the Day
John is known in Scripture as being Jesus’ beloved disciple. Jesus called John along with his brother, James, as they were mending their nets near the Sea of Galilee. He called the two brothers “sons of thunder.”
John was the youngest of all the disciples, and it is believed he outlived the others. He was the only one who is known to not have suffered martyrdom—he died when he was in his 90s.
John, represented in today's featured image by a stained glass window from the chapel in St. Edward's Hall, was present at most of the important moments of Jesus’ life—the transfiguration and in the Garden of Gethsemane before Jesus was arrested, for example. In the story of the Last Supper, John leans on the breast of Jesus to ask who would betray him. Of all the disciples, he remained with Mary at the foot of the cross, and before he died, Jesus handed over care for his mother to John.
John eventually settled in Ephesus among the Christian community there. His biography indicates that he was arrested, tried in Rome, and banished to the island of Patmos, where he received visions and dreams that he recorded in the Book of Revelation.
After the emperor’s death, John returned to Ephesus, where the Church's tradition holds that he wrote his Gospel. John’s Gospel is entirely different from those of Mark, Luke, and Matthew—it presents Jesus with great authority, radiating divinity throughout. For his soaring theology, John is represented by the symbol of an eagle (depicted below in stained glass from the chapel in Morrissey Hall). He also wrote three letters that are part of our New Testament.
It is said that when John was too old to preach to the Christians at Ephesus, he was brought before the congregation and would simply say, “My little children, love one another.” When asked why he always repeated these words, he would reply, “Because it is the word of the Lord, and if you keep it, you do enough.”
Several pieces of St. John's relics are kept in the reliquary of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on campus, including a piece of his tomb. The chapel in Farley Hall, a women's residential hall on campus, is named after him. Croatian artist Ivan Mestrovic sculpted a story from John's Gospel of Jesus talking to a Samaritan Woman at the ancient site of Jacob's Well and portrays John and Luke on either side of the main sculpture, which stands in front of O'Shaughnessy Hall on South Quad.
St. John the Evangelist, whose Gospel urges us to love one another because God is love—pray for us!