Faith in the Word Made Flesh

Homily for the Feast of St. John the Evangelist

St. John the evangelist, who we celebrate today, had one purpose in writing his Gospel and the other Johanine texts; namely, he wrote so that his contemporaries and those who were to come after him would be able to place their faith in Jesus, the Word Made Flesh. Wherever we look his writings, we see this call to faith.

Today we proclaim first lines of St. John’s first letter. Invoking three of the five senses, he proclaims that eternal life comes to us through the Word Made Flesh. “What we have heard,” “what we have seen,” and “what we have touched” concerns the Word of life. There is some debate about whether or not these opening lines to his first letter were intended to be the original prologue for his Gospel. Careful study of these lines reveals that both the prologue to the Gospel and the opening lines of this letter are about bringing people to faith in Jesus. Having said that, the purpose of having faith is to bring us to eternal life.

This was John’s genius. He was not concerned with all the various sins that plagued the human race because he believed that the foundation of all sin is the lack of faith. As he wrote in the sixth chapter of his Gospel: “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.” Words similar to these can be found throughout the fourth Gospel. So important is this idea that St. John concludes the Gospel by saying, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of [his] disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may [come to] believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

As we worship at the table of the Lord today, we are once again invited to touch, to taste, to hear, and to see the person of Jesus in the Eucharist that we receive in communion. It is the food that strengthens our faith in the sight of any adversity. May we always be worthy of this gift which has been entrusted to the church by Jesus himself.