“The Apostle of Christ, the beloved of God, hurries to deliver the unrepentant people. That he receives you when you fall to Him, the One who received you when you rested on his comb; And the cloud of the pagans which he hath laid upon us to scatter him, asking us for new peace and great mercy. “
Today, we live the prophecy times, when the love of many has cooled, when the lust of the body and the lust of the eyes saturate the face without any shame, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16) is the “backbone” of the modern man. Although we believe we have been enriched and need nothing (Revelation 3:17), although we are dealing with the truth and all the holy things and preaching them with ease, by moralizing others, we are now the poorer, the more blind And more naked than ever: although our name is alive as we live, we are dead (Revelation 3, 1), because our love has been impregnated.
The disciple whom Christ loved, as he himself is called modesty, “for his humbleness and gentleness” (St. John Chrysostom) strengthens in all his writings the commandment of love. The command that he himself lived and breathed through all the pores of his being, becoming himself love, after the likeness of the image of Love, from the heart of Caru, the Spirit sorpens, at the feet of the Cross Who taught the passion, and from Whom he received the worthy of the son, Through “adoption” – of the Mother of God.
From St. John the Apostle we learn what it means to have both the heart of a faithful and obedient disciple, a true and devoted son, but also (as we will see below in his life about his running after the fallen apprentice, Between blasphemy) of the father-in-law to even the ultimate impotence of the elderly.
“Behold, Your Son!” He cried out of the cross the Lord of His Mother of God, pointing to John, the only one of the twelve who had silently followed Him up to Golgotha. What a glorious glory for an earthly man to devote to receiving the deception of the Precious Virgin Mary, above all angels!
Who else could forever confide the mysteries above the threads of the disturbing revelation of the end of this world (the book of Revelation), if not the purest and most loving of the “friends” of Sai, who Had the spiritual fellowship closest to the Mother of Light and the Empress of Heaven!
Blessed Jerome tells that at the end of his earthly passage, while the apostle was old and weak, unable to talk but with great difficulty, he said only: “Copilas, love one another!” Asked by the disciples why he repeated this indefinitely, Saint John replied, “This is the commandment of the Lord, and if you keep it, it is enough.”
We owe to love one another (1 John 4:11) and to put our souls for brothers (1 John 3:16). Unfortunately, in our times without the vivid and personal love, the Truth is preaching with the insistence of a universal, diligent, demagogic and spiritual conscience, ignorant of the fact that anyone who calls the Son does not have the Father, and That we must walk in the Light as He walked:
“Whosoever departs, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God; He that is left in his doctrine, he also has the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him in the house, and do not say to him, “Welcome!” (2 John 1: 9-10)
The children are the last hour (1 John 2:18) and many deceivers have gone out into the world (2 John 1: 7), St. John tells us over ages. Not to “modernize” the pure inheritance left by the Holy Fathers, fitting with this age, but to distinguish the will of God, which is good and pleasant and perfect (Romans 12: 2), as St. Apostle Paul, who called John the Apostle “the pillar of the Church”.
Many feel that if they have a more sentimental and softer yarn, they are born blond and loving, practicing a “love” without right-counting, by body and blood, and not by the Spirit, and even chasing or defamating them Those who feel they are not like them.
Many believe, without realizing, that if Saint John said that “God is Love”, that would mean that whatever they call “love” is the same with … God. Yes, God is Love, but to understand the love of God, we must penetrate the Spirit of His love and not make our psychological, natural and “humanistic” love idol. The love commanded by Christ and preached by the Apostle John is not the same with “tolerance,” “charity,” and “philanthropy,” of which secularized mankind is doing so today, as it is not the same with emotional exaltation or excitement or sentimental weakness, Own personalities.
As somebody said these days: If we take the love of the neighbor from the context of the Spirit and the teaching of the Church and put it above the love of God and the teaching of Holy Scripture revealed by the Holy Spirit, then we become idolaters and blaspheurs, even without realizing . “Love” and “tolerance” proposed today are clearly anti-Christ, because they are not directed to the sanctification of people and their closeness to Christ God, but to the “enslavement” of men into sin and heresy. The “love” of humanists and ecumenists is hypocritical not only because it is pure demagogy, but also because it despises or relativises, minimizes both the ideas of sin and virtue, the Holy Spirit and the worldly spirit, as well as any matter related to Truth, because It is not the love that comes from God, the love of the one Spirit of the Truth-Christ. “Love” is meant to justify, legitimate sin and lie, and people can no longer discern between good and evil. The Apostle and the Theologian of Love teach us very clearly:
“Do not love the world, nor what is in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him “(John 2:15).
From the life of the Apostle and Evangelist John particularly impressed us with this episode which gives an extraordinary testimony of what the true pastoral goodness means, in the image of Christ, who carries an infinite care of each sheep in the Lord’s herd and for It does not preserve absolutely nothing, whatever the price.
In this age full of teachers, preachers and moralists of all kinds, but still more deserted in Parents, it is good to remember at least the living parables of the old ones, what really means to be a Father, what really means parental love and “Guarding the souls” of the brethren or of the spiritual sons, in order not to let them loose the “lions” who are raving and swallowing all those in temptation and deprived of their parental care.
“It is still inappropriate to keep silent on this, which Clement Alexandrin confesses († 215). The apostle, when he walked in Asia through the cities, once saw a young man turned out of doing good, whom he taught him and baptized. Then, wishing to go somewhere else to the preaching of the Gospel, before all he entrusted the young man to the bishop of that city, to teach him all the good work. And the bishop taking the young man taught him the Holy Scripture. But he did not take care of him as he was duty, nor did he give him a teaching that is right for the young, but left him in his will, and after a while the young man began to live evil, to get drunk and steal . Then he took hold of companionship with the robbers, who took him, led him into the wilderness, and ascended him into the mountain, made him captain of his band, and waged war with the power on the highway.
And after some time, when John returned, he came to that city, and when he heard the young man rebellious, and became a thief, he said to the bishop, “Give me the pawn which I have left to you, as in Some faithful hands. Bring me the young man whom I commanded you to teach the fear of God. ” And the bishop said with a cry: “The young man has perished, he died with his soul, and his body is robbing the way.” And John said to the bishop, “Is it so that you keep your brother’s soul? Give me a horse and a man to get me to look for the one you lost. ”
And leaving, when John arrived at robbers, he asked them to bring it to their captain. They had gone. Seeing the young man, John was ashamed and, rising up, was running into the wilderness. And John, watching his old age, ran after him, crying, “Turn my son to your father, and do not despair of your mistake, I receive your sins upon me. So wait and wait for me, that the Lord sent me to you. ” Then the young man turned, with great earthquake and shame, at the feet of the saint, unwillingly looking for his face. And by bringing love to his father, he embraced him, kissing him and taking him gladly into the city, for he found out the lost sheep. ”
Through his unconscious thought and virgin cleansing of his heart, St. John was worshiped, like Moses, after many days of fasting and praying in the mountains, receiving the Word and dictating to his disciple the Gospel, and at the end of his life, Revelation.
“For it was necessary to measure the sky with the palm of the hands and to endure the measures of men to encompass all of the inaudible and hard to tell, that they should not deviate on the path of other teaching as simple as any other voice of the saints who have Were seen and servants of the Word, rejecting the evil teachings, John ascends with the penetration of what is most important of the divine dogmas, “writes St. Cyril of Alexandria.
“Among the evangelists, the one who has the highest words of evangelical preaching, who has spoken above all the words that surpass any power of understanding, is John, the son of thunder,” St. Basil the Great also professes.
“Repentant Gods sprang up, Apostles, out of your pure mouth, out of which the Church of God adapts to the right faith worship the Trinity of one being; Which I now ask, John the Promising God, to strengthen and save our souls. “