Welcome to the Pauline Family's "Year of the Bible"! We've been reading the Bible clear through this year. We are finishing the New Testament, so read along with me. But first, let us pray:
Father,
When the fullness of time had come, you sent your Word in the One who said, “Whoever sees me, sees the Father.” No revelation can surpass this until Jesus comes again. By your gift, the Church continues to receive unfathomable riches from the inheritance handed on from the Apostles and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit.
Let the Spirit who inspired the writing of today's pages "guide me in the truth and teach me" to follow Jesus ever more closely, until he calls me to follow him to the Kingdom where he lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.
Today's chapters are 1 John 2-4.
What if the author of the incredible Gospel of John wrote a kind of appendix? What if he wrote something that had not been part of his "Gospel project," but that met a rising tide of pastoral need as pseudo "gospels" began to circulate denying the divinity or the full humanity of Jesus? What would the author of the Gospel of John say in such a situation? How would he encourage the faithful? This is what we are reading in the First Letter of John!
As Christmas draws near, various news services and websites usually highlight some of the very sort of documents that John is beginning to notice even as early as the first century. Today's clickbait headlines will speak of "hidden" or "secret" or "suppressed" books that "the Church" doesn't want you to know about. But you can read for yourself how highly someone who heard the Word of Life, saw him with his eyes, looked upon him, and touched him with his hands (cf. 1 Jn 1:1) rated some of those "secret" teachings. He literally related them to the Antichrist!
As in his Gospel (and like St Paul!), John urgently stresses the law of love, love in its concreteness: "Let us love not in speech, but in deed and in truth" (3:18).
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