By Fr. George Dorbarakis
Saint John is the first theologian of our Church. Indeed, this is his distinctive title above all: John the Theologian. Others who have been honored by our Church with this title are Saint Gregory the Theologian and Saint Symeon the New Theologian. Thus, for our Church, very few bear this title, which means, on the one hand, that particular qualifications are required for someone to receive this designation, and, on the other, that all those who have obtained a degree from a theological school are not considered theologians, except in a loose and improper sense. What, then, is required for someone to be a theologian, and, more particularly, what led the Church to bestow this title upon Saint John? We insist upon this point because the hymnography of the Church focuses its attention above all on this very matter: “The Word, O most excellent one, worthily revealed you as a theologian, initiating you into His divinity and teaching you the ineffable dispensation according to man.” That is, Christ, the Son and Word of God, revealed you as a theologian, O most excellent John, because He led you into the secret knowledge of His divinity and taught you the mystery of His plan to come into the world as man. In other words, a theologian is one who is initiated by God Himself into knowledge of Him and, consequently, into the proclamation to the world of His dispensation.
What is moving about the hymns of his service is that they reveal where and when Saint John was principally initiated into the knowledge of God: at the Secret Supper, and specifically at the moment when the Apostle reclined upon the breast of the Lord, asking Him, “Could I be the betrayer, Lord?” “Reclining upon the breast of Wisdom, and learning fully the knowledge of the Word, you thundered forth divinely, ‘In the beginning was the Word.’” It is, of course, known to everyone that Saint John recorded this secret knowledge of God, the gift of theology, chiefly in his Gospel, regarded as the most spiritual of all the Gospels and the last book he wrote, in the deepest old age, as well as in the other books he left us, which move our hearts to profound compunction: his three so-called Catholic Epistles (1, 2, and 3 John) and, certainly, his Divine Revelation.
Saint John is also characterized as the Lord’s “beloved” disciple, as well as fearless and undaunted. Indeed, this is how he is characterized in his Gospel, because he loved the Lord passionately, and the Lord in turn responded to his love. For although Christ loves everyone equally, according to the measure of each person’s response, they receive more or less of His love. As we said, he was also the Lord’s closest disciple, perhaps because he was also His relative, something we see as well at His Crucifixion. He alone was present together with the Panagia, the Mother of the Lord, at the Cross; and for this reason, shortly before He gave up His spirit to God the Father, He said to His Mother, “Woman, behold your son,” and likewise to John, “Behold your mother.” From that time onward, John indeed took the Panagia into his home, until she fell asleep.
The fearlessness of his character was the result of his great love for the Lord. He himself writes: “Perfect love casts out fear” — something we also see in the fact that he did not abandon his Lord for even a moment. He was the only one who followed Him into the courtyard of the high priest; at the time of the interrogation, he was beneath the Cross, as we have said; and when the disciples learned from the Myrrhbearing women of the Lord’s Resurrection, he was the first to run “faster than Peter” in order to see with his “own eyes” this astonishing event.
The fearless and courageous spirit of the Saint is also recorded in an incident in which, when he was already at a very advanced age, he did not hesitate, even at the risk of his life, to seek out a robber whom he himself had converted to the faith when the man was a young man — something he succeeded in doing.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
