The Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian; Our Venerable Father Arsenius the Great (408-50); Arsenius the Great (450)
Acts 15:35-41; 1 John 1:1-7; John 10:27-38; John 19:25-27; 21:24-25
All-night Vigil Feast
Read John 10:27-38
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
Today we have the joy of celebrating St. John the Theologian on our calendar of saints. How appropriate that our reading is drawn from his Gospel, and in addition to that, the reading itself reveals some of the most incredible revelations that he received in order to teach us who God is. In our reading today we learn about the incredible unity of the Father and the Son. It is not that Jesus was a perfect man, selected or adopted by God the Father to carry out an important mission on earth, but that He is eternally begotten before the ages. Our Lord tells the Scribes and Pharisees that He and the Father are one, in other words, of the same essence.
This understanding of God is crucial for us to understand if we are to accept God on His own terms. St. John teaches us that God is love. The one thing God certainly could not be, if He were only a single person, is love! Love always requires the other. If God is love, He must be a Community of Persons- the Lover, the Beloved and the Love of the Persons- the Most Holy Trinity!
Let us renew our faith in the God-Man and grow in love for Him and our neighbors, remembering at all times that it is impossible to love truly without the other!