Saint John: Faith Made Tangible

The Feast of Saint John draws the heart straight to the center of the Christian mystery: God made visible, love made tangible, and faith that comes alive in the space between seeing and believing. John writes as one who heard, saw, and touched the Word of life; the Gospel shows him running to the empty tomb; the Psalm summons rejoicing because God’s reign is real and just. Together, these readings meet a modern world tired of abstractions, overstimulated by screens, and hungry for a faith that can be lived with the senses and held with the hands of the heart.

The Gospel That Runs

The Gospel scene is filled with urgency. Mary Magdalene runs. Peter and the Beloved Disciple run. Love moves quickly, yet reverently. John arrives first, but he waits for Peter; affection runs ahead, humility holds space for apostolic authority. This is not a race to be first but a pilgrimage into mystery. The folded burial cloths; so ordinary, so physical; are eloquent signs: the new life of the Resurrection is not chaos or theft, but divine order remaking the world from the inside out.

Today’s world knows both speed and exhaustion. Many are sprinting through deadlines, grief, newsfeeds, and expectations, while others have slowed to a halt under the weight of anxiety or loss. The Gospel invites both the runner and the weary to the same place: the emptiness that God has transformed. We bring our absences; relationships that feel hollow, prayers that seem unanswered, dreams that died; and we peer into them with John. The details will not always dazzle, but if we stay, signs emerge. Faith often begins not with spectacle but with small, telling traces: a peace that doesn’t fit the circumstances, a kindness that appears unbidden, a word of Scripture that lands too squarely to be coincidence. John “saw and believed.” In a disenchanted age, that sequence challenges us. We are invited to interpret reality in Resurrection-light.

What We Have Touched

John’s first letter insists that the Christian claim is stubbornly sensory: “what we have heard…seen…looked upon and touched.” Christianity is not a philosophy with a spiritual aftertaste; it is the announcement that God has entered time, taken flesh, and left fingerprints on history. For a culture often tempted to keep religion private and disembodied, John’s testimony re-centers the faith in the real.

Where can this be “touched” today? In Scripture read slowly and received personally; in the sacraments, where Christ binds himself to matter; water, oil, bread, wine; so our own matter can be sanctified; in the faces of the poor and those who suffer, where love becomes concrete; in reconciled relationships, where grace is no mere idea but the hard-won practice of mercy. To witness is not to win an argument; it is to say honestly, “Here is where I have seen life.” Such testimony, offered without defensiveness or triumphalism, makes fellowship possible. And fellowship, John says, completes joy.

Justice at the Root of Joy

Psalm 97 proclaims a world in which God’s throne rests on justice and judgment. This is not a pious add-on to religious feeling; it is the bedrock under real rejoicing. Light dawns for the just because justice clears away the fog of falsehood. In a time of misinformation, frayed institutions, and quiet cynicism, the Psalm’s confidence is corrective. Joy that ignores injustice is sentimentality. Joy rooted in God’s righteousness is durable.

To live this Psalm in contemporary life looks like integrity at work when cutting corners seems normal; fair dealing when the system rewards aggression; advocacy for those whose voices are left out; and a personal refusal to benefit from what harms others. In such choices, light dawns; not always dramatically, but steadily. We may even find that anger at the world’s wrongs, when purified by prayer and channeled into concrete love, becomes the strange birthplace of hope.

John the Beloved: Contemplation with Courage

John, son of Zebedee and brother of James, followed Jesus from Galilee’s boats to the foot of the Cross and beyond. Tradition remembers him as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” an identity received, not seized. He leaned on Christ’s heart at the Last Supper, stood with Mary at Calvary, and cared for the Church in his old age, especially around Ephesus. He is credited with the Fourth Gospel, three letters, and the Revelation; texts that soar like the eagle, his symbol, carrying readers into the heights of divine mystery while remaining close to the incarnate details of Jesus’ life.

John was likely the only Apostle not killed for the faith, yet the Church has long called him a martyr in desire and in love. He teaches that intimacy with Jesus does not produce sentimentality; it yields clarity and courage. The one who rested on Christ’s chest could stand under His Cross. The one who ran to the tomb could wait for Peter. Contemplation does not escape the world; it equips a person to love the world with God’s own heart.

Fellowship That Heals Our Loneliness

John writes “so that you too may have fellowship with us.” He links testimony to community. In a time marked by isolation; where people are connected to many and known by few; this apostolic instinct is balm. Faith is personal, never private. The dynamic between Peter and John models a Church where different charisms coexist: love that runs fast and authority that guards unity. When affection and office, charism and structure, pray and work together, credibility grows. When they fracture, witnesses become harder to believe.

Fellowship that heals loneliness is built through ordinary courage: confessing sin and receiving mercy; telling a trusted friend what God is doing rather than keeping it to oneself; making a place at the table for someone who expects none; staying when conversation gets awkward; choosing to forgive a real hurt. Here, joy does not feel like a performance. It feels like home.

Practicing John’s Way Today

• Return to the signs: Spend ten quiet minutes with John 20. Notice the details. Ask, “Where is the Lord inviting me to ‘see and believe’ this week?”
• Make witness tangible: Name, in a sentence, how you have heard, seen, or touched God’s life in the past month. Share it with someone.
• Choose justice close at hand: Repair something small but real; an unpaid apology, a neglected commitment, a skewed practice at work.
• Sit with Mary: Like John, take her “into your home.” Ask her to help you stay with Jesus when love costs something.
• Let love run, let humility wait: Move quickly toward good works; move slowly to judge and speak last. Both swiftness and deference are holy.
• Praise with the Apostles: Make a simple “Te Deum” of your own; thanking God for the company of saints who keep faith large when life feels small.

John’s feast arrives in Christmastide, when the Church lingers over the astonishing claim that God has become touchable. The manger and the empty tomb stand like bookends around a single truth: Love has entered our history and remade its meaning. In that light, rejoicing is not naïveté. It is fidelity to reality. May the Beloved Disciple teach us to see carefully, to believe wholeheartedly, to love concretely, and to live in such a way that someone else can say because of us: “I, too, have seen the Lord.”