St. John the Evangelist

St. John the Evangelist, son of Zebedee and brother of James the Greater, was a Galilean fisherman called by Jesus to be one of the Twelve. With Peter and his brother he belonged to the Lord's inner circle, and the fourth Gospel repeatedly names him "the disciple whom Jesus loved." He reclined next to Christ at the Last Supper, stood beneath the cross where the dying Jesus gave His Mother into his care, and, running to the empty tomb on Easter morning, "saw and believed."

Christian tradition honors him as the author of the fourth Gospel, with its soaring prologue on the eternal Word made flesh, of three New Testament epistles that proclaim that "God is love," and of the Book of Revelation, written during his exile on the island of Patmos. Tradition holds that he later led the Church at Ephesus and, alone among the apostles, died in old age rather than by martyrdom. He is celebrated on 27 December, his symbol the eagle.