Wednesday December 27:
FEAST OF SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST, BELOVED APOSTLE

White vestments

    Known as the "beloved Apostle," Saint John, along with his brother Saint James were personally called by Jesus to become fishers of men. This had been his avocation before Our Lord touched his life on the shores of Galilee where he had been born, the son of Zebedee and Salome as chapter 4 of Matthew and 1 of Mark relate. John was the youngest of all the Apostles and dubbed "Sons of Thunder" by Our Lord mainly because of their volatile temperaments which, in John's case, was greatly calmed once he began to follow the Messiah. It is no secret, as Sacred Scripture attests to, that John was a personal favorite of Jesus. The Apostle was handpicked by Our Lord to accompany Him to the place of the Transfiguration, the healing of Peter's mother-in-law, the rasing of Jairus' daughter from the dead, and the agony in the garden. John rewarded his Master by being the only Apostle to follow Jesus to the foot of the Cross. He in turn was rewarded by Our Lord when He entrusted His most prized possession into the beloved Apostle's care - His very Own Blessed Mother Mary as the Apostle relates in his own gospel account, chapter 19: 25-27. John was the first to reach the empty tomb on Easter morning. After Pentecost, John accompanied Peter to Samaria to spread the Word to the people there and was present at the Council of Jerusalem in 49. After that he traveled to Asia Minor. Some believe Our Lady accompanied him there and lived in Ephesus, where she died and was assumed bodily into Heaven. Saint Paul affirms in Galatians 2: 9 that John, along with Peter and James, were "these pillars" of the Church. Church historian Tertullian holds that John traveled to Rome where he miraculously evaded martyrdom under the vile Roman emperor Domitian, emerging fresh and cool after being submerged in a boiling cauldron of oil. The Romans subsequently exiled him to the Isle of Patmos where the Apostle received the visions he recorded in the Apocalypse/Revelation - the last book of the Bible. In 96, upon Domitian's death, John returned to Ephesus where he wrote his gospel along with his three epistles. He has always been depicted with an eagle to signify the soaring majesticness of his writings which were indeed so brilliant theologically that some came to call him "John the Divine." John was totally human, however, as we know and he died in Ephesus around 104. Some historians refute this, claiming John returned to Patmos where he died just before the turn of the century. Regardless of accounts, it is fact that John lived a long life and contributed much to furthering the faith and completing Public Revelation.

Thursday December 28:
Feast of THE HOLY INNOCENTS, Martyrs

Red vestments

    This feast commemorates the slaughter of the holy innocent male babies who were killed in King Herod's lust to find and destroy the Child Jesus as related in Matthew 2: 13-18. Ever since the 5th Century this feast has been observed as stated by Saint Peter Chrysologus. It became a solemn feast in 1568, declared so by Pope Saint Pius V. Though legend has it that thousands were slaughtered, the actual figure was closer to only 20 infants; yet even one is too many. Though Saint Stephen is considered the first martyr of the Church, in truth these innocents were really the first martyrs for unwillingly or not, they were the first victims to die for Christ. They are the original martyrs who St. John writes about in Apocalypse/Revelation 7: 14 and 17 when one of the elders says, "These are they who have come out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb...and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." The holy innocents today are the innocent babies of the 20th Century who have been aborted by their own mothers. Like the first holy innocents who were a figment of a threat to Herod, these modern day innocents also are slaughtered because they are a threat to the worldly ways of those who seek the culture of death over the Culture of Life.

December 27, 2000
volume 11, no. 274
DAILY LITURGY

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