St. John

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

Today is the Feast of St. John, one of the Patrons of Youth. We find in his letters, the first letter of St. John, Chapter 1, “This is the declaration which we have heard from him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him there is no darkness. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not speak the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he also is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:5-7).

Often the Gospel of John has been called the Gospel of Light, and his other writings also focus a lot on light.

Young people today, as always, need a lot of light, of truth, of doctrine. We can ask St. John today for all the apostolic work that we do with young people, and that he might stir up our heart, like our Founder wanted us to do, so that we might have a special eye for young people, and always have a special interest in the work that Opus Dei does with young people: the work of St. Raphael, which is entrusted also to St. John.

He was a native of Bethsaida. His parents were Zebedee and Salome. He was the brother of James the Greater, and we are told in St. Mark that he “left his father Zebedee in the boat and followed him” (Mark 1:20). He said yes to Jesus, and never stopped saying yes to Jesus, right to the foot of the Cross.

He was enormously faithful. This is one of the reasons why our Father had a great love for St. John. He was young, noble, pure, generous, faithful, through thick and through thin. There were moments when the other apostles ran away, but he stayed there right to the end, and it was to him that the care of Our Lady was entrusted.

He had been a disciple of John the Baptist, until one day John the Baptist pointed Jesus out to him: “Behold the Lamb of God” (John 1:36) and John committed himself.

Our Father loved that word “committed.” He talked a lot about how we have to help young people to be committed. We’re told inThe Way, “Youth gives all it's got” (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 30).

We're out to help the youth of today to be generous with their life, to commit themselves to doing something decent with their lives, to be men of ideals, of virtue, to do something great, and not “flutter about like a barnyard hen” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 7).

The Gospel of John includes many things not emphasized in other Gospels. It was written much later, towards the end of the first century, about the year 97. It had a different literary style.

Like all the other apostles, John suffered a lot. During the persecution of Diocletian, he was boiled in oil, but somehow, he survived. Later he lived and died a natural death.

One of the goals of our interior life would be to have the intimacy of a John. He was the one who sat beside Our Lord at the Last Supper; his head rested on His breast.

John had a great heart, youthful, pure, generous. Our Father used to say that our interior life could be modeled on the interior life of John. We also could try and acquire the light that John had, to give light to the world, a world that often walks in darkness.

In many areas of the world, young people are not being told the truth—the truth about human love, about marriage, about purity, chastity, modesty, virginity, celibacy.

“Again, therefore, Jesus spoke to them saying, ‘I am the light of the world. He that follows me does not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life’” (John 8:12).

There was a kindergarten child once who was taking part in the Christmas play. At one stage in the play, this little girl had to say the words, “I am the light of the world.” But she forgot her lines.

Her mother was sitting in the front row and her mother tried to prompt her. Her mother whispered to her, “I am the light of the world.”

The little girl piped up and said, “My mummy is the light of the world!”

We know that Jesus is the light of the world. He helps us to walk in light, and to help the whole of society to walk in that light— hence the importance of our apostolate of doctrine, of giving formation.

In the Opening Prayer of today's Mass, it says, “O God, Our Father, you have revealed the mysteries of your Word through John the Apostle. By prayer and reflection, may we come to understand the wisdom he taught.”

In the Prayer Over the Gifts, it says, “Lord, bless these gifts we present to you. With St. John, may we share in the hidden wisdom of your eternal Word which you reveal at the Eucharistic table.”

We could ask Our Lord to follow in the footsteps of St. John, to follow Our Lord with a youthful, undivided heart.

It's interesting to look at the vitality of St. Josemaría at the end of his life. He said to many people, “You may not find too many people at this stage of their life who talk about love the way I talk about love.” He was a man who was fully in love right to the end of his life; very youthful, very dynamic.

Lord, help us to put no resistance to your call, to be faithful to the end, like St. John was when all the others had fled. Help us to have faith in the Church, faith in the Holy Father, faith in our vocation, in the Work, in the Father.

John showed special marks of friendship with Jesus. He was present on special occasions, at the Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1, Mark 9:2 Luke 9:28), at the Agony in the Garden (Matt. 26:27, Mark 14:33). He had things revealed to him that others didn't have revealed to them and all the time he refers to himself in his Gospel as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (cf. John 13:23, 19:26). It's rather beautiful.

On the one hand he refers to himself in the third person, he doesn't name himself—sort of anonymous. But he makes it very clear that “I was the disciple whom Jesus loved” above Peter, above James, above so many of the others.

When Our Lord appeared on the shore, when the apostles were out on the lake and He tells them to cast the net to the other side of the boat, they cast and they made a great haul of fish. Then John looks again at the stranger on the shore and cries out, Dominus est, “It is the Lord” (John 21:7). With his noble pure heart, he is the first to recognize God.

“Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8), not just in the next life, but also in this one.

Later we're told that Peter jumped out of the boat and began to swim ashore (John 21:7). But John was the first to recognize that it was Jesus.

St. Edith Stein said, “Through John, we know how we are to participate as our destiny in the life of Christ—as a branch of the divine vine—and in the life of the triune God” (Edith Stein, The Hidden Life).

In the stable at Bethlehem, these days when we come to adore Our Lord like the shepherds, John seems to say to us, See what happens to those who give themselves to God with pure hearts. In return, as a royal gift, they may participate in the entire inexhaustible fullness of the incarnate life of Christ.

Of all the apostles, John is the one who speaks most about charity:

“A new commandment I give you, that you love one another” (John 13:34).

“Little children,” he says on another occasion, “love one another” (1 John 3:18).

“Beloved,” he says in his letter, “let us love one another because love is from God and everyone who loves is born of God and God is love” (1 John 4:7).

“If God has so loved us, let us love one another” (1 John 4:11).

Today is another one of those days when we approach the Christ Child in the manger with true desire to learn how to love. Christ is Divine Love personified, Incarnate Love, and every time that we approach the Christ Child, we learn a little more about love. We fill our souls and our hearts and our families with joy.

Pope Benedict says, “The true gift of Christmas is joy. You should bring not expensive gifts that cost time and money, In today's world, God is absent. People need anesthesia to live. They live in a dark world. With a smile, an act of kindness, a little help, forgiveness, you can bring joy and that joy will come back to you” (Benedict XVI, Homily, December 18, 2005).

We can ask St. John today for that joy, as perhaps, in our prayer, we think a little bit more about all those young people that God has placed around us, so that we ask for the grace to see what He wants us to do with them, so that we might “launch out into the deep” (Luke 5:4). That's where God wants us in this great quest for the young people of tomorrow, the leaders of tomorrow.

“I have come to spread fire on this earth, and what would I but that it be enkindled” (Luke 12:49). We find in many of the writings of our Father what sorts of wonderful words that can help us to think about this great apostolate that he wants us to do.

We're told in The Forge, “We are children of God. —Bearers of the only flame that can light up the paths of the earth for souls, of the only brightness which can never be darkened, dimmed, or overshadowed. —The Lord uses us as torches to make that light shine out...much depends on us. If we respond, many people will remain in darkness no longer but will walk instead along paths that lead to eternal life” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 1).

Consider the great importance that these words have for young people. Our Father wanted us to be very focused on young people. “I have come to spread fire on this earth...” (Luke 12:49).

He wanted us to take very good care of the atmosphere of fun in the St. Raphael centers and to see what all of us can do to promote that atmosphere of fun and attractiveness with initiative, so that people get attracted there.

He wanted us to take very good care of the traditional means of the work of St. Raphael, the means that God has specifically given to each one of us. That's not just something to be done by young people. Our Father wanted us in our 90’s to be thinking and dreaming of the work of St. Raphael because that's the future. There are many stories of supernumeraries in their 90’s giving circles to teenagers.

We can try and get very involved in perhaps organizing meditations for young people or bringing people to retreats or Circles or classes, seeing what we can do with the children of our friends, in our neighborhood, or in some center or university to move this work of St. Raphael. The sky is the limit. The possibilities are enormous. Our Lord wants us to launch out into the deep, to bring this message of friendship and confidence.

With the recent letters of the Father talking so much about friendship, we have to try and see: How can I grow in the quality of my friendships, in the quality of that friendship with all people, specifically, also with young people?

The Father, in his letter of December or November 2020, talks about the vast apostolic horizons that are opening up to us as we approach the 100th anniversary of the start of the Work. He's invited us to go back and read and re-read his letters, as we have to keep doing, to absorb the spirit of our Father more and see where God wants us to put that spirit into practice.

Our Father talked a lot about the poor of Our Lady: visits to the poor, which is one of the traditional means of the work of St. Raphael. We can bring our children and friends of our children on visits to the poor, organize some catechism classes, or help them to get to Confession on certain occasions—that we reach out to them with everything that we have.

Our Father also talked about selection in the work of St. Raphael, that we look for people who are virtuous, not necessarily people who are bright, although sometimes good exam results can be a good sign. But sometimes very intelligent people can also be very lazy.

Our selection is fundamentally looking for people who are virtuous, hardworking; people who can be leaders, who can lead other people. We try to pour water on the top of the pyramid because when you do that, all the water reaches the bottom of the pyramid. If you pour water on the bottom of the pyramid, it may never reach the top. We like to say that our work of selection is like the snow on the mountain peaks which, as it melts, makes the valleys fertile.

In all areas of society, we have to try and focus on those people who can do more, who can lead others. We have to try and be daring in our apostolate, and that means breaking out of our shell of comfort—going to places and doing things that perhaps we never dreamt of doing.

We're told in St. John, “When you were young, you went where you wanted to go. But when you're older, I will take you by the hand and lead you to places where you did not dare to go” (John 21:18).

I heard a story about a young fellow of the Work who was studying in Oxford. After the first year or two, he felt he had dealt or had dealings with most of the interesting people in his classes. He felt he needed to meet new people, like all of us need to do from time to time, to break new ground, reach new horizons.

He got an idea that most of the people who come to the University of Oxford—they often come by train from London. And so, on the first days of the new academic year, he spent a lot of time at the train station.

When he saw a guy getting off the train with a big suitcase and looking a bit lost, he would approach him, ask him what college he was going to, help him to find the place, and struck up a friendship with many new people. He met many new people during those early days of the new academic year. People said he was like an apostolic terrorist.

Likewise, we need to break out of our shell. Find new ground. Like a fisherman who sometimes sees that he has exhausted all the fish in this particular area, he needs to find a new place to fish from.

I saw a fisherman fishing once from some rocks and you could see that he got into the best possible place from which to cast his net. He had to climb over some craggy rocks. Probably he cut some of his legs in doing so. But the important thing was to get to the best possible place from which he could cast his line out far into the deep. From there he fished.

Sometimes we also have to maneuver ourselves into those positions in society where we can cast our line, where we can be effective, and to make this the greatest goal of our life, because the apostolic aspect of our Christian vocation is fundamental.

It's not something added on for switched-on Christians. It comes with our Baptism, but because of the formation we have received, Our Lord wants us to be particularly effective, to be thinking of souls and dreaming of souls. This is a very appropriate day in the stable at Bethlehem to ask Our Lord for that apostolic zeal and proselytistic zeal.

I saw another fisherman once fishing from a boat and he was very gently, and methodically, and purposefully, feeding out the net into the water. You could see from the slow firm way that he did it that this man was very focused on catching fish.

We're not just here to organize activities. We're not just here to go fishing. We're not just here to do something nice. We're here to catch the fish. That's what it's all about.

The methodical way in which this man was letting out his net into the sea was a very good sign that what he was really after was to catch the fish. He didn't just throw the net into the sea any old way and say, ‘Here, fish, swim into this!’

If we have contact with young people, we have to try and work the harvest. If you're a tutor in a school; if you have mentees in the university; if you're a member of some club; if you have some pastime that leads you to link up with other people—there's a whole vast sea without a shore there that's waiting for us.

We can bring all those things to our prayer and see that these souls are souls that God has brought close to me, and somehow, He wants me to be involved with them. To do things with them. To raise the spiritual temperature. Maybe, to plan goals with them. To talk to the Lord of the harvest in Bethlehem about what I'm going to say to this particular fish and that particular fish, what bait I'm going to use.

No fisherman fishes from his home. He goes to where the fish are. St. Josemaría has encouraged us to try and be involved in all sorts of national and international organizations, to make a splash, to have an influence, to be there where the great decisions of society are made, so that we can Christianize the environment and to think also of our society, of our country, of our town, fifty years from now.

What can I do to build the society of the future? Who are those people that are going to have a big impact? If we talk to the Lord of the harvest, He will teach us how to work the harvest—perhaps how to give people something interesting to read, suggesting articles or books to them; or have a plan to talk to people about specific virtues; and to be daring, to talk to people about regular Confession and how to go about it.

Don't presume that people are familiar with all of these things. We know that young people are looking for answers. They're walking in darkness, and we have the light.

“To some he gave five talents, to some three, to some, one” (Matt. 25:15). All of us have five talents. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here. God wants us to use those talents well, to launch out into the deep.

We can try and foster a great sincerity. You know, people often need somebody to talk to at a deep level, but to get onto that deep level with people, often we have to be daring.

I heard a man once who had been in the army. He was in the cavalry, and he used to do parachute diving. He talked about how at 30,000 feet they would launch themselves out of the plane.

In a get-together with Blessed Álvaro del Portillo, he stood up and said, “Father, in my work I have to do parachute jumping and sometimes when it comes to the moment to launch myself out into the midair from 30,000 feet, it doesn't cost me a thought. But when I'm sitting down over coffee or over a beer with my friend, and the moment comes to launch myself into a soul, sometimes I tend to hold back a little bit. How can I have the same daring in those moments that I have at 35,000 feet?”

I can't remember the answer, but I thought it was a very good question; something that we may all experience in some way or another.

When that moment comes, we need to have the fortitude and the daring to launch into the souls that God has placed around us: to use the opportunities, to seize the opportunities, to create the opportunities, so that we can build up the souls in the way that God wants us to.

We cannot give what we do not have. So, consider the importance of our own personal formation, so that we can give more in those conversations that we have with other people.

We're an instrument in their formation, and the things that we may say to some friend, or some tutee, or mentee, may be things that they will remember for the whole of their life. We can't minimize the importance or trivialize the importance of those meetings.

Once a friend, always a friend—the importance of having a list of people that we know or we've talked to, updating our records, their phone number, their email, remembering their birthdays, sending them a ‘Hi’ at Christmas, or perhaps sending them, now that we have the means of social media, some little treasure in a regular way. It can remind them that we're still their friend, we're there for them, we're thinking of them, we're praying for them.

There was a story once of some of the early St. Raphael people in the 1930s who got dispersed to all of the battlefronts in the Spanish Civil War. Our Father would write to all of them; try and keep in contact with them. If they didn't write back, he would write a second time and a third time, but if there was still no answer, he wouldn't write anymore, because perhaps they were dead. Some of these guys wrote back and stayed in contact, but some of them didn't bother.

One of those who had never written back, thirty years later, was now married with children. He was visiting Rome and decided to go and pay a visit to Msgr. Escrivá, who had now become a very important personality. He told Don Álvaro, “Look, I'm coming, but don't tell Msgr. Escrivá who I am. Let's see if he can remember me.”

He came into the room and said to our Father, “Father, I knew you many years ago. I don't know if you can remember me or if you can recognize me.”

Our Father was silent for a moment. He looked him up and he looked him down, and then our Father said, “I know who you are. You're such and such a person from such and such a place, and I've been waiting for a reply to my letter for the last thirty-five years.”

Our Father never forgot. Once a soul was in his mind and in his heart, he was there for always. We have to try and have the mind and heart of our Father—to reach more people, to be, as St. Paul says, “all things to all men” (1 Cor. 9:22) and to spend ourselves in this great enterprise.

What a wonderful goal we have for the whole of our life, to spend ourselves in this great business of souls. Our Father said the work of St. Raphael should be the apple of our eye. We should burn to invocations, burn with that desire.

Our Father said, Uri igne Sancti Spiritus! “Enkindle in my heart the fire of your love, an apostolic fire.”

In the sequence for the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, it says, Fac, ut árdeat cor meum in amándo Christum Deum. Make my heart to burn in loving Christ Our Lord.

Our Father also says in another moment, “If you love your apostolate, you can be sure that you love God” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 922).

If we find ourselves dreaming of souls, wanting to be more involved, looking for ways to be more apostolically effective, having initiative, being a leader, thinking out of the box—that's a very good sign.

Sometimes, like our Father, we may say, “Lord, that I may see!” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 127; Mark 10:51). Open my eyes—let me see the opportunities.

Don Javier wrote on a certain occasion, “My daughters and sons, let us remain vigilant that we never deserve to receive that reproach that we would cease to be ‘the salt of the earth and the light of the world’ (Matt. 5:13-14)” (Javier Echevarría, Letter from the Prelate, January 2008). Our Lord in St. Matthew talks about that possibility.

If we were no longer to give salt and light, what a tragedy! “That should never happen,” Don Javier said. “Do you nourish your apostolic zeal as a supernatural instinct? Are you asking Our Lord, in the stable in Bethlehem, to put opportune words on your lips in your daily conversations, also in your professional dealings and when resting? We have to speak to people about the divine condescension shown by the Son of God's coming into the world, and about how Our Lord awaits our assistance in spreading His message of love, life and peace” (ibid.).

Don Javier talked about the occasion of “the 75th anniversary of the moment when St. Josemaría gave a decisive push to the apostolic work with young people, which he had been carrying out since the founding of the Work. It was on Saturday, the 21st of January 1933, when our Father gathered for the first time a small group of young men, to give them a talk on Christian formation.”

Now God has taken that little seed and spread it all over the world to each one of us. He said, “Our Father began that activity with such great supernatural outlook, eagerness, and affection! Nevertheless, as he so often recalled, only three guys came to that first Circle, despite having spoken to nine or ten people about it.”

This is the law of averages. We can't be surprised if out of every ten, one or two come. But those are the ones that God wants. He says, “St. Josemaría was not discouraged. He knew he was doing the work of God. Filled with faith, having recourse to the intercession of Our Lady and St. Joseph, and entrusting that work once again to the archangel St. Raphael and to the apostle St. John, he gave those first fellows Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament.

“Let us meditate slowly on his words. ‘When the class ended, I went to the chapel with those guys. I took hold of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament in the Monstrance. I raised it and blessed those three...and I saw three hundred, three hundred thousand, thirty million, three hundred million...white, black, yellow, of all the colors and combinations that human love can devise. Yet I fell short because...it has all come true. I fell short, because God has been so much more generous.’

“On the next day, Sunday, January 22, the first catechism class took place (also an indispensable means in our apostolic work with young people and with others as well), attended by some of the young fellows that our Father was dealing with. They went to a school in the outskirts of Madrid, in the district of Los Pinos, where a large group of children awaited them. The classes of formation and catechism and the visits to the poor and the sick, which our Founder had been carrying out for some time already, were and always will be a solid foundation for this apostolate, which is, as our Father always used to say, ‘has to be the apple of our eye.’”

We can ask Our Lady, on this great feast of St. John, that we might make a new beginning in our work with young people—seeing those new horizons—and, like Our Lady, treasure very carefully in our mind all the ideas that she is communicating to us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

GD