THE PASSING OF ST. JOHN THE THEOLOGIAN

 

Today is the feast of the Passing of the St. John the Theologian.  According to the tradition of the Church, St. John died an old man in Ephesus, where he had been asked to serve as the third bishop of that city, after the martyrdom of St. Timothy, who had been chosen by St. Paul the Apostle and St. Prosdocimus.  The elderly St. John, the last of the Lord’s twelve Apostles, had founded a school of Christian theology in the hills above Ephesus, and there he taught the next two generations of leaders in the Christian Church.  St. Polycarp of Smyrna and St. Ignatius of Antioch were among his pupils there. Finally, when he was very old, he handed over the task of teaching to younger men, but he still insisted on being present at every function and every lecture, although he slept through much of the proceedings.  Often his students would come to him and gently shake him, and ask him to speak to them about the Lord Jesus.  Towards the end of his life, more and more on these occasions he would look up at the faces standing above him and say simply: “Little children, love one another.” Then, on one occasion, a student named Asyncreticus saw some other students waking the aged master, and he said: “Why are you doing that leave him alone. He’s lost his mind. He always says the same thing.” But to Asyncreticus’ surprise, St. John responded: “I always say the same thing because it is the essence of the whole teaching of the Lord Jesus. If you have truly mastered perfect love of God and perfect love of one another, then you have mastered all.”

     According to this last of Christ’s twelve Apostles, the essence of Christ’s whole teaching was perfect love of God and perfect love of neighbour. It is the Spirit of Charity that is the Spirit of Christ, and everything in the Church is ordered to the fulfillment and propagation of that Spirit.  The Christian Liturgy, for example, whether the Divine Liturgy itself or the daily offices, has only one purpose in respect to us: to make the life of Christ present in us, to make His teachings live and breathe in us, and to join us to His Resurrected Body. But receiving that Spirit of Christ, and being conformed to His commandments seems well nigh impossible without a very special effort on our part that is aimed at a very important, but intermediate goal.  That goal, the Fathers of the Church tell us is purity of heart.  It is impossible, or, as we have said, well nigh impossible for us to be conformed to the Spirit of Christ if we are filled with our own thoughts and desires.  Purity of heart aims at the purification of the heart, the destruction of our passions, our thoughts, our desires apart from Christ.  The image is often presented to us in the writings of the Fathers of a full cup.  In order for the cup to receive another liquid—in order for a cup of water, for example, to be filled with wine, the cup must be drained, poured out.  In the same way, each of us has to become empty—empty of our thoughts and desires apart from Christ, so that we can be filled with the Spirit of Christ that engenders perfect love. The most important thing for us to remember in the effort to purify our hearts is that there is only now.  The past does not exist any longer (whether it be ten minutes ago or twenty years ago), and the future does not yet exist. There is only now, and our challenge now is to be faithful now, in this moment. We spend a great deal of time grieving over the past, rehearsing old injuries. Or we spend an equal amount of time planning the future, rehearsing future conversations. Purity of heart demands that we do what we are doing now, without reference to a bitter past or an uncertain future, but only to Christ. Every action that is done in the simplicity of “now” is prayer, for the Fathers tell us that purity of heart is already prayer.  

     Purity of heart does not come easily.  It is accessible to us only through prayer, assisted by fasting and almsgiving.  Since it is already prayer, it is also strengthened through prayer. Traditionally, we use meditation on Holy Scripture in order to purify our hearts, and replace our own thoughts and desires with those that are according to Christ.  Our Church also has the tradition of the Prayer of Jesus, “O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This prayer was designed by the Fathers to be said over and over again in meditative stillness, in order to replace the thoughts of the heart with the words of the prayer itself. Focusing on the words of the prayer alone, and rejecting every distraction from them, we empty our minds so that God can fill them. In the same way that we use the Prayer of Jesus, we can and should also use the words of the Scriptures, whatever words have the most meaning and consolation to us. It is wise for us to pray in this way for at least twenty minutes a day, while striving in the rest of the day to be faithful to Christ by living and working now, offering to Christ our God each moment and each action. With our hearts purified in this way, our God can have free entrance in His life of love.  We will then be able to fulfill what was before an impossible command to love God and our neighbour perfectly.