A reflection on the disciple John and his experience of being loved by Jesus, motivates him to go toward the tomb.
Christ is risen, Hallelujah! He is truly risen, Allelujah! Welcome, brothers and sisters, to our luminous path, our Via Lucis, station two: the disciples at the tomb. After the women brought the message to the disciples who were enclosed in the cynical, they found the tomb empty. Peter and John ran towards the tomb, and as we know, John was faster and outran Peter. He got to the tomb first.
What was the force that was pushing John towards the tomb? We can find it in the description that years later, when he wrote the Gospel, he made about himself, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” I was reflecting that John doesn’t speak about himself as the disciple whom Jesus enlightened, or whom Jesus gave strength to be a good person, or the disciple whom Jesus motivated in life. No, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and the word used here is “agape,” this total self-giving sacrificial love with which Jesus loved John now dwelled in John’s heart. That’s his new name: the disciple whom Jesus loved. It is not John who loves Jesus, although, to a certain extent, there is this minimal love. It’s not John’s love towards Jesus, but a personal experience, the certainty, the conviction that he has been totally friendly and completely loved by Jesus Christ, by his master. When this Divine love, the power of the Spirit dwelling in John, now moves him towards the tomb, he runs, he goes towards the tomb.
How would you describe yourself? Would you say about yourself, “I am a disciple whom Jesus has loved all throughout my history, my life”? Or you might even think about yourself, sometimes I heard people making different remarks or even jokes, “Well, I’m a person that Jesus bypassed or ignored or didn’t pay attention to or was not on the list of the most favorite ones.” Then I call myself the disciple whom Jesus loved, the disciple in whom Jesus stored his total sacrificial love that now can motivate me, as it motivated and moved and proved John, to go towards the tomb, regardless of the risks, the Roman soldiers, all the persecutions that were unleashed against the disciples.
When I have a personal, lasting conviction that Jesus Christ loves me now with his total love, then I can go through any struggles. But I need to be reminded and at the same time bring to my awareness the fact that I am totally and freely loved by Jesus Christ. This will be my identity; this will be the phrase I will be describing my life. What is your life all about? And you may say, “I’m a disciple whom Jesus loved.”
The love that Jesus has for John, this “Agape,” is the strength that pushes him on till the end of his life, and he will be repeating one phrase to those who will be asking him about his memories of Jesus’ love, “one another.” That’s what I have learned from my master.
I would like us to pray and reflect today about those events of our lives when we may say, “I am a disciple whom Jesus loved.” Do you have those in your life that with conviction, you may say, “I am Jesus’s disciple because he loved me in this and that and that one event of my personal history?” It is important for us to stick to those memories, not allowing the Devil to erase them.”
