"This disciple
St. John the Apostle
View the Triptich
is the one
who vouches for these things
and has written them down,
and we know
that his testimony is true."
John 21:24
This is the final panel of a triptych (three panels) and we have seen the other two, Our Lady of Sorrows and Jesus Christ Extreme Humility. Both of these were commissioned by a friend whose sister was dying of AIDS. Our Lady of Sorrows was painted as she lay dying, and after her death, in her honor, Jesus Christ Extreme Humility. I thought the whole motion and prayer would end there, but one night I awoke in the middle of the night with an image of John crystal clear in my imagination. It came from the right arm of a Cross in Florence, a masterpiece of the medieval master Cimabue. I found the Cross in a book, enlarged the picture of John attached to the right arm, and began to make a drawing for an icon to complete the other two. It seemed natural that John, who stood by Mary's side at the Cross should be there again in this Triptych of the Passion.
John is leaning on his right hand in a fixed sorrow. The letters near his halo are abbreviations for "Apostle John." He is the young apostle, tradition tells us he was the youngest, and the only one to escape martyrdom. Looking into his eyes we see that though he escaped physical martyrdom, he has experienced a kind of soul death watching the murder of the Lord of Life. His head, eyes, mouth, fall with a grief that befits the "disciple whom Jesus loved" (Jn. 13:23) or the "best friend" of the Lord.
One cannot encounter any image of John without thinking of his gospel, his three letters and the impossibly creative, prophetic, apocalyptic book of Revelation. Volume after volume has been written on John's work and especially his gospel. It has been called the last gospel by most scholars and the first gospel by John Robinson in his work The Priority of John. It is considered the most sublime, difficult, convoluted, mystical and elegant in style. Yet for all the things that have been said that tend to scare people away from John, he himself is quite direct and simple about the goal or intention of his gospel. He has recorded the signs and words of the Lord"" ...so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this you may have life through his name." (Jn. 20:31)
Legends of the life of John grew fast in the early church. After the crucifixion he took the Mother of God to Ephesus and was present at her death or falling asleep (the Dormition). Around the year 90 he was taken to Rome to be martyred but miraculously escaped death and was exiled by the emperor Domitian to the solitary isle of Patmos. There he received and dictated to his young scribe Prochorus, the final book of Scripture, the Revelation. St. Augustine and some in the Eastern church believe John died in Ephesus, a radiantly holy elder bishop, his last words were "Little children, love one another." Then he too, like the Mother of God, fell asleep and was bodily assumed into heaven, only to return at the time of the "Second Advent" to do battle with the antichrist.
Whatever beliefs you hold and cherish about the beloved disciple, it is in the sacred intent of his gospel that you find him. He records and gives his testimony that you might know that Jesus is God, and that in praying, studying, eating this word - bitter and beautiful - as he himself was asked to do (Fr.10) you might have life.
No where else in the Bible is there such conflict with darkness, with the antichrist, antilife, as in John. Darkness, depression, confusion, a slow, thick, smothering evil spills over all that is life. John gently teaches about it, fearlessly names and faces it, and at times spits a fire of invectives against it. This is life or death. In our own times the prophets such as Dorothy Day, William Stringfellow, Daniel Berrigan and most recently Pope John Paul II have called this darkness the "culture of death."
Gazing at this icon, we find gradually, not only grief, but a closeness to John. As his students and friends we see the Word made flesh through his eyes. We pass the Word of Life from one to another, like the lighting of our small candles at the Holy Saturday Easter Vigil. In the silence as the tiny tapers fill the room with light we await the Risen Christ.
William Hart McNichols,SJ
- Other Icons by Fr. William McNichols
- Information about Fr. William McNichols and his Icons
This page is managed by
Fr. Raymond A. Bucko, S.J.
of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology
at Creighton University.E-Mail: bucko@creighton.edu
Page Last Updated: August 16, 2001
