From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Of a Pure Mind and Simple Intention (1)   
      
   MAN is raised up from the earth by two wings-simplicity and purity.   
   There must be simplicity in his intention and purity in his desires.   
   Simplicity leads to God, purity embraces and enjoys Him. If your heart   
   is free from ill-ordered affection, no good deed will be difficult for   
   you. If you aim at and seek after nothing but the pleasure of God and   
   the welfare of your neighbor, you will enjoy freedom within.   
   --Thomas à Kempis --Imitation of Christ Book 2, Chapter 4   
      
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   December 27th - St. John the Evangelist.   
      
   St. John the Evangelist, like Shakespeare, has something about him   
   which irresistibly attracts the crank, and probably more books have   
   been written and more wildly fantastic theories advanced about his   
   writings and their authorship than about any other writer who ever   
   lived. The reason may perhaps lie in the strange twosidedness of his   
   character. How, says the critic, can works so profound have been   
   written by a mere Galilean fisherman? How can the author of the   
   Johannine epistles, with their message of love and brotherhood, be the   
   fire-breathing visionary of the Apocalypse? Or how can the 'Son of   
   Thunder' who wanted Christ to call down fire from heaven upon the   
   inhospitable Samaritans (Luke 9:54) be identified with the gentle   
   'disciple whom Jesus loved' and to whom he bequeathed the care of his   
   Blessed Mother? Yet no theory of multiple authorship will fit the   
   facts, for all these different St. Johns are intimately and   
   inextricably mingled in all the Johannine writings. The unlearned   
   fisherman is there in the extreme simplicity of syntax and vocabulary.   
   The mystical theologian is there in the Prologue (John 1:1 ff), the   
   Discourse in the upper room (John 13 to 17) and the First Epistle. The   
   Son of Thunder is there in the truculent speeches of Jesus and in St.   
   John's own denunciation of 'Antichrist' (I John 2:18 ff). The   
   differences between the Apocalypse and the other writings are balanced   
   by equally striking similarities. Even in the anecdotes of St. John's   
   old age, preserved by second century writers, we find the same   
   contrast. The aged bishop of Ephesus, who condensed all Christian   
   teaching into the one imperative, 'Little children, love one another,'   
   was the same St. John who refused to enter a public bath-house where   
   Cerinthus the heretic was known to be, for fear lest fire from heaven   
   should destroy the very building (fire from heaven again"). In short,   
   we are still in the same position as those priests who interrogated   
   St. John after Pentecost (Acts 4:13) and who, 'discovering that Peter   
   and John were simple men, without learning, were astonished.'   
   Astonishment: that is what everyone must feel who comes to close   
   quarters with St. John.   
      
   It is as well to remember, of course, that at least 50 years--half a   
   century of prayer and meditation, of teaching and debate--separate St.   
   John the Apostle from St. John the Evangelist. As a very young man he   
   had listened to John the Baptist, and when the Baptist pointed to   
   Jesus and said 'Behold the Lamb of God' he had transferred his   
   allegiance to our Lord. A few months later, when he and his elder   
   brother James were helping their father with his fishing, Jesus called   
   to them, 'and they, leaving their father Zebedee in the boat with the   
   hired men, turned aside after him' (Mark 1:20). Thereafter these two,   
   with Peter, became the closest and most constant companions of Christ.   
   They alone were with him at the raising of Jairus's daughter, at the   
   Transfiguration and in Gethsemane. After the resurrection they became,   
   along with James son of Alphaeus, the 'pillars of the Church'   
   (Galatians 2:7) in Jerusalem; but after his elder brother had been   
   beheaded by Herod (C. 44 A.D.) St. John seems to have left Palestine,   
   and it is James the Less who is bishop of Jerusalem at the time of St.   
   Paul's last visit (c. 57 A.D.). Of St. John's own movements between   
   then and his exile on the island of Patmos we know nothing. Even the   
   date of that exile is uncertain, depending on whether we take the   
   wicked emperor of the Apocalypse to be Nero or Domitian. But all   
   authorities agree that he spent his later years at Ephesus, acting as   
   patriarch to the churches of Asia; that he died there at a great age,   
   about the end of the century; and that it was only in these later   
   years that he consented, under pressure from his disciples, to commit   
   his Gospel to writing.   
      
   Everything that St. John ever wrote could be contained in quite a   
   small booklet, yet so rich is the vein that one is embarrassed to know   
   how best to sample it in such a brief note as this. Should one   
   concentrate on the famous 'Logos-doctrine'-that Christ was the 'Word'   
   of God, the word by which he created all things and by which he spoke   
   to Moses and the prophets? Or should one discuss St. John's insistence   
   on Faith-by which he meant not only belief in the divinity of Christ   
   but also an absolute and boundless trust? He certainly abhorred all   
   heretics, especially those who denied the actual, earthly, fleshly   
   reality of God-made-man in this world. Or should one concentrate on   
   John the contemplative, the spiritual father of all Christian monks   
   and nuns? Or on the visionary of the Apocalypse? Or on the poet of the   
   Gospel prologue?   
      
   St. John himself would probably have said that the whole of him is   
   summed up in the single sentence of his first Epistle (I John 4:8),   
   that 'God is love.' It was love which had brought God down to earth in   
   the person of Jesus, and it is only by love-of God and of his   
   fellowmen--that a man can join himself, through Christ, to God. And   
   this union with God--for the body in the Blessed Sacrament, for the   
   mind and will by faith and good works-is the only thing that matters.   
   It is life and light and victory and bliss, here and everywhere, now   
   and forever. But it can all be summed up and bound together by the one   
   word 'love.' Love of God implies faith and trust and obedience. Love   
   of our neighbor implies all that is meant by 'right conduct.' All   
   goodness, all happiness, all wisdom is included in that single word.   
      
   'And he who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. I   
   am Alpha, I am Omega, the beginning of all things and their end; those   
   who are thirsty shall drink--it is my free gift--out of the spring   
   whose water is life. (Revelation 21:5.)   
      
   Jesus had promised that water to Nicodemus (John 3:5), to the   
   Samaritan woman (John 4:13) and to all the world (John 7:37), but it   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)