Feast of Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist

. . . he saw and believed.

Early in his priesthood, Father Peter Julian Eymard had an experience that shaped his life as a priest, a preacher, a religious, and then as the founder of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament. While on a visit with his pastor to a neighboring parish in Saint Romans, he had a mystical experience. He would later refer to it as a “taste of God.” For what he saw shaped what he would come to believe about God and his relationship with God.

Biographer Andre Guitton SSS, reflecting on the spirituality of Father Eymard at that time, concluded that he was preoccupied with sin, fear, and a sense of unworthiness. But what he saw or experienced on that mountain top Calvary opened up something more liberating for him: “a way whose center is love.” Ultimately, Father Eymard came to see an intimate and personal love of God to be found in Jesus in the Eucharist, who, in the words of Saint John the Evangelist, lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).

This evolving spirituality of Father Eymard, focused on God’s tender love for each one of us, comes through in many of the letters Father Eymard wrote to those he counseled – none more poignantly than to Mrs. Camile d’Andigne in 1865: “God loves us personally with a great benevolent love . . . (He) loves us as if you were his only daughter” (or son).

In today’s gospel, the evangelist John states that he was Jesus’s beloved disciple. What did he see or experience that led him to believe that?

Each of us can ask the same question. What have you seen or experienced that led to your belief about Jesus? And what do you tell others (your own evangelism)?

Let Us Pray:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and call my own. You have given it all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace; that is enough for me. (Suscipe prayer of Saint Ignatius Loyola)