John the Apostle

John was the son of Zebedee, a prosperous fisherman on the Sea of Galilee, and Salome — who may have been the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus, making John a cousin of Jesus. His brother was James the Greater. He was called with James from their fishing boat — Jesus nicknamed them Boanerges, “Sons of Thunder,” for their fiery temperament (Mark 3:17).

John was one of the three apostles in the inner circle (with Peter and James) present at the Transfiguration and the agony in Gethsemane. He is the Beloved Disciple of the fourth Gospel — the disciple who reclined at Jesus’s breast at the Last Supper, who stood at the foot of the Cross (the only apostle to do so), and to whom Jesus entrusted the care of his mother: “Woman, behold your son… Behold your mother” (John 19:26-27). He and Peter were the first to the empty tomb — John outran Peter and arrived first, but waited for Peter to enter before following (John 20:4-8).

After Pentecost, John worked alongside Peter in Jerusalem — healing the lame man at the Temple gate (Acts 3), being arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin (Acts 4), and travelling to Samaria to confirm the first Samaritan converts (Acts 8). Paul lists him as one of the three pillars of the Jerusalem church alongside James and Peter (Galatians 2:9). He eventually settled in Ephesus, where he governed the churches of Asia Minor, ordained Polycarp as Bishop of Smyrna, and wrote his Gospel, three letters, and the Apocalypse.

Under the Emperor Domitian (c. AD 95), John was exiled to the island of Patmos, where he received and wrote the Apocalypse. Tertullian records that before exile he was brought to Rome and plunged into boiling oil but emerged unharmed. He returned to Ephesus under Nerva and died there of extreme old age around AD 100 — the only apostle to die a natural death. Irenaeus reports that Polycarp vividly remembered John’s teaching and presence in Smyrna.

Benedict XVI wrote of John: “John represents the type of the intimate friendship with Jesus, and it is precisely this intimacy with Jesus that shows the whole realism of the Incarnation. Love for Christ is not a vague sentiment but a total giving of self, body and soul, which Jesus himself enables.”