Homily for the Commemoration of the Apostle John the Theologian
By Fr. Daniel Sysoev
By Fr. Daniel Sysoev
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!
I congratulate you on the day of the memory of the Apostle John the Theologian — the apostle of love, a very mysterious apostle. Today his feast is connected neither with his death nor with some missionary labor of his, but with those events that took place at the tomb of John the Theologian in Ephesus up until the very beginning of the twentieth century. It was an annual miracle that occurred precisely on this very day.
On the eighth of May, a rose-colored dust would yearly appear upon the empty tomb of John the Theologian, and this dust healed many sick people. One could say that it was a regular miracle, like the miracle of the Holy Fire. The Church even established a feast in honor of this event.
If we look closely at the mysterious image of Saint John, we will see a mystery. The apostolic age is coming to an end — the close of the first century and the beginning of the second. Most of the apostles — eleven out of the twelve — have already been executed for the name of the Lord. Most of the Seventy Apostles have also been executed. By that time the Apostle John remains the only living witness of the Risen Christ.
On the one hand, it seems that the dawn of the morning sun — Christ the Savior — is already fading, and the time of scorching heat is beginning — the era of the greatest persecutions against the Church, surpassed only in the twentieth century. But on the other hand, this time builds a bridge to the very end of the ages, because the Apostle John still had to drink the cup that Jesus promised him.
To the two brothers, the apostles John and James, who very much desired to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus, the Lord said: “You shall indeed drink My cup and be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized; but to sit on My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by My Father” (Matt. 20:23).
And James the son of Zebedee indeed drank the cup first — he was the first executed for Christ — while John passed through time and remained untouched. Yet even his death is very mysterious: he disappears without a trace in the city of Ephesus.
And this disappearance, during the beginning of the persecutions against the Church, proclaims that the Church must continue waiting for the returning Christ. The miracle that always occurred on this day is a witness that our Lord is coming, our Lord draws near. And it happens so that the Church will not grow weary of waiting.
For the “weariness” of the first Christians is understandable — they expected Christ from day to day. But God’s plan was not limited only to the Greeks or the inhabitants of Asia Minor; He also desired to convert the Russians. The Lord still had distant plans for the Chechens, the Chinese, the Indians, and other peoples who also had to come to Christ.
At that time the apostles did not even suspect that such peoples existed, but God knew that in order to gather saints from these nations as well, His Coming would be delayed. And so that Christians would not think that the Second Coming would never happen, the Lord revealed at the end of the apostolic age such miracles as the disappearance from this world of some of the greatest saints.
Death did not touch the Apostle John. He disappeared bodily from this universe in order to return again, just as God says to him in the Revelation of John the Theologian: “You must prophesy again before many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings” (Rev. 10:11).
As Revelation says, John must come again at the very end and proclaim the same Good News that the apostles delivered to the Churches in the beginning. This helps us understand that the feast of the Resurrection belongs not only to Christ but also to every Christian, because the Resurrection of Christ is the beginning of the universal resurrection.
And the disappearance of the apostle means that Christ takes us from here completely — soul and body together — and that we shall fully enter the Kingdom of the Heavenly Father. The disappearance of the apostle, the miracles of bodily restoration that occur at his tomb, the miracles performed at the Empty Tomb of the Lord, and the countless signs and wonders that continue even today in the Churches — all proclaim that our homeland is not here! Our homeland is where God is! Our fatherland is where our Father is!
God knows how easily man becomes attached to visible things and how easily he forgets that the visible is temporary while the invisible is eternal.
One example may be given. A certain man in the ninth century said that the Kingdom of God had already come because the Roman emperors had become Orthodox Christians, they crushed the barbarians, their enemies fled before them, all nations had heard the Holy Gospel, and the end of the world had practically arrived.
Five years later, this same man found himself in prison, thrown there by a most pious Roman emperor who had embraced the heresy of iconoclasm. That man was Theodore the Studite. He thought that the earthly Roman Empire could become the Kingdom of God, and the Lord “explained to him plainly” that this was not so.
A similar but far more terrible story happened with Emperor Heraclius, who defeated the Persians, the greatest enemies of the empire. Iran lay at the feet of Byzantium. The Cross had been returned to Golgotha.
At that time the opinion spread among the people that the end of the world was rapidly approaching: Iran had been defeated, and the gospel had spread throughout the world. People said that the great Byzantine emperor would defeat the antichrist and then hand his crown over to Christ.
But the Lord corrected all who thought so. Ten years later Jerusalem was captured by the Muslims, who, though considered barbarian tribesmen, conquered half the world. In this way the Lord said: no earthly kingdom will become Mine.
In Russia there was also a great patriotic fervor in 1914. It seemed that this was the strongest Orthodox country, that only the restoration of the Holy Cross upon Hagia Sophia in Constantinople remained, and then a vast Orthodox world would arise. Anthony Khrapovitsky said that the time would come when Jerusalem would become a Russian province.
It seemed that all this was about to happen, but only three years passed, and then came 1917, when everything collapsed, because an earthly kingdom is incapable of becoming the Kingdom of Heaven.
The empty tomb of John the Theologian still remains a silent witness that we should not seek attachment to the earth. John disappeared from the world; Saint Irene disappeared from the world; Enoch and Elijah disappeared; and this means that we too must depart bodily from this earth.
We are strangers and pilgrims here, while our homeland is in Heaven, where we must direct our hearts, our minds, and our will. There we must soar on the wings of love and hope, so as to find our true Father and the true King of kings Who awaits us there.
This is what today’s feast of Saint John the Theologian proclaims.
The symbol of John the Theologian is the eagle soaring to Heaven. Often it seems to us that what is most important is here on earth, but we must remember the great mystery of John the Theologian — the empty tomb from which he disappeared.
That tomb reminds us of the heavenly homeland, toward which we must direct our hearts, where we must transfer our treasures, where we must build our home, and toward which we must strive day and night.
May the Lord help us not to cling to the earth, but to strive toward the heavenly City which John saw in his Revelation.
May the Lord preserve you!
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
