Letters from John

To conclude our discussion of the seven Catholic Letters, we are left with the writings of St. John. The three letters are attributed to the apostle, also the author of the Fourth Gospel and Revelation. The three letters of John take us to the environment of his community living in Ephesus in the second half of the first century, towards the end of the century.

They are three very different writings; the first is long and substantial; the second letter is concise and summarizes the first; the third is very short and completely different. Another question is to situate these three epistolary writings together with the Gospel and Revelation. We shall start with the third one because probably this letter of John is a family note and is the oldest of these writings.

The author introduces himself as the presbyter, the elder. It is a title that pertains to John, not simply because he is an elder but, above all, because he is the authority, he is the head of the family of that ecclesiastical environment. It's written to a certain Gaius to thank him for having welcomed the itinerant preachers. We have to imagine an ecclesial situation where the various Christian communities were visited by prophets.

The apostle John, in Ephesus, surrounds himself with a group of collaborators, and these teachers, doctors, prophets that he formed are sent to the cities of the area to continue forming Christians, to preach and bring them up to date and to complete their training. Gaius must oversee a community, and he welcomed those whom John had sent, unlike another called Diotrephes, who instead is proud and overbearing; he loves to command, he wants to rule alone and does not accept that anyone should stick his nose into the affairs of the Church he leads.

He conflicts with the authority of the presbyter John, who threatens to visit him and replace him with another, a certain Demetrius, who is willing to collaborate. The third letter of John is a brief note in which a small portrait of a Church in difficult and conflictive situations is given to us.

The first letter of John written a few years later highlights a serious conflict that took place within the Christian community led by John. It is thought that the first letter is not a real letter and that it was written after the Gospel, almost as an addition to the Gospel. It is now fashionable to write prefaces and conclusions. John must have done something like this; after publishing the Gospel, i.e., the great collection of apostolic preaching mediated by him for many years.

That text was misinterpreted. There were some Christians in the Johannine milieu who misinterpreted John's teaching. This is a Gnostic heresy, very active in the environment of Ephesus. Even the name of the leader of this contentious group is given: Cerinthus (Note: The earliest account of Cerinthus is given by Irenaeus in his refutation of Gnosticism, Adversus haereses). These opposed John by misinterpreting John's writing, and a conflict is created within the tenets of Gnosticism present in the community. At a certain moment, the group of Cerinthus separated; a schism, a separation, a division took place.

To help the correct interpretation of the Gospel, John wrote a kind of homily, a catechesis that would focus on the correct principles of interpretation. An interesting element found in this first letter of John is the presence of opposite phrases. ‘If we say we are without sin, we deceive ourselves; if on the contrary, we recognize our sin, God forgives us.’ Similar formulas are repeated many times. We can understand that in the formula 'if we say,' the apostle is proposing the main ideas that sustain the secessionists, those who separated. In fact, he says, "They left us, but they were not of us." 'Had they been with us, they would have remained with us. Instead, it is fitting that it should be revealed. They came from another reality; they had another way of thinking, they were not inspired in the authentic revelation of Jesus Christ.'

What are the fundamental problems that made these secessionists emerge? We can reduce them to two: two theological questions, one related to Christology and the other to morality.

First, they contest the humanity of Jesus. It seems almost strange to us because, in our world, we are pretty accustomed to hearing objections to the divinity of Jesus, that is, to believe that Jesus was a mere man. Instead, these people, precisely because they are Gnostics, i.e., knowledge enthusiasts, pure theists, believe that the body of Christ, his humanity is perhaps a mere appearance. And it is the divinity that counts, not humanity. 'He appeared to be a man.' What counts is what he said; what counts are the ideas. John, on the other hand, answers this position too intellectualist that is content with concepts, ideas, messages and disembodies the word. John believes that they are antichrists.

In Revelation, the word 'antichrist' never appears, but it is present in the first letter of John. When John uses the word 'antichrist,' he means someone who has an opposite thought to that of Christ. Not a character who is the counterpart of Jesus. He says that there are many antichrists; he calls ‘antichrist’ those who think in opposition to Christ have another mentality and deny the apostolic tradition. "Many are the antichrists who have come into the world." They are those who deny that Jesus came in the flesh, who deny the human reality of the Son. Therefore, a part of this reflection of John serves to underline the reality of the incarnation, of the humanity of Jesus.

The second question is of a moral nature; it is the passage between theory and practice. For those who have contested the teaching of Jesus, theory is sufficient, practice is of no use; concrete behavior is indifferent. On the other hand, John insists on the necessity of practical consequences, precisely because God is love, it is fundamental that the one who knows God and lives with God, performs concrete works of love and manifests his faith in loving relationships.

It is necessary, according to John, to make faith a concrete life; this is the Gnostic danger that John fights: to center faith in the head, turning it into an intellectual question, of ideas, where life does not intervene. The second letter of John is nothing more than a summary of the first. It contains the same ideas as the first; it is very short and was probably written as a summary to be read quickly and immediately access the content of what the apostle wanted to say.

Let us now dwell on some important passages of the first letter. First of all, let's look at the prologue, the first verses that introduce the reflection and mirror closely the prologue of the gospel of John: "What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life—for the life was made visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us— what we have seen and heard we proclaim now to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; for our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing this so that our joy may be complete.”

Let us note the connection with the Gospel, the underlining of the Logos who became incarnate, was in the beginning and has come to dwell among us; and "we," says John as an apostle, "are eyewitnesses, we have heard him, we have seen him, we have touched him, we have touched the word of life." It's hard to touch the word. Let us recognize from the beginning this underlining of concreteness. John says that he has touched the word; he is, therefore, an eyewitness of this reality of the incarnation.

And then he stresses koinonia, communion; 'our communion as apostles is with the Father and the Son, and to be in communion with the Father and the Son you must be in communion with us apostles.' This emphasis is important because the apostles are the foundation of the faith of the Church; they are those men who concretely had a historical experience; they have not accepted an idea; they knew a person, lived an event, were personally changed by the encounter with that person, lived a decisive event of their experience with Jesus. Therefore, their shared experience becomes the foundation of the Church, which is qualified as apostolic. They entered into communion with the Father and with the Son, and for us to obtain this communion it is necessary to be in communion with the apostles. We cannot go our own way; the point of reference is the apostles.

The whole reflection of this first letter of John can be divided into two parts, taking into consideration the two main themes I have already mentioned. There are literary clues; in chapter 1 verse 5 it says: " Now this is the message that we have heard from him and proclaim to you: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” This is the message; this is the gospel. The first fundamental message: God is light. On the other hand, in chapter 3, verse 11, we find a similar phrase that presents another theme: "For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: we should love one another.” This is the second aspect of the gospel: communal love.

Then we could divide the whole text into two parts; the first part is the message about light, knowledge, the true and correct knowledge of God. God who became man in Jesus; he is the light. The second part, the second aspect of the Gospel, the necessity of mutual love. I underline an important aspect in the first part.

In the middle of chapter 2, the apostle says: "Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” What does he mean by the world? He does not mean creation; he does not mean all humankind. Let us remember that in the Gospel Jesus said: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son," and now how is it that the apostle says, 'do not love the world'? In this case, he means something else; the very word 'world' itself also means the corrupt structure of this earthly situation; it is the corrupt mentality of the world understood as the negative structure that corrupts one's mentality, our social relations. Don't love the present mentality of the world; it simply means 'don't go after your instinct.'

“For all that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life, is not from the Father but is from the world.”

Three important realities: Sensual lust is the desire to possess; it is a basic instinct always to have more. For example, among other things, with this technology so close at hand, today we are easy victims of sensual lust without even being aware of this lust of possessing, of having so many television channels, of having instruments that contain thousands of songs; we have so many things, we can't even watch more than one channel at a time; and having tons of food, we can't eat it all. And yet we notice how the instinct to have more, to fill the shopping cart, to fill ourselves with movies, with songs, leads us to see that it's good to have more. It's an underlying instinct that manifests itself in a thousand ways; it's the lust of the flesh that deceives and disappoints. The second is the enticement of the eyes; it is the desire to appear; the desire to impress; it is the situation where appearance is preferred to being.

It's a straightforward matter; Have you ever observed a small child when it starts to walk, if he falls, the first thing he does is to look around, if the mother wisely pretends that nothing has happened, he gets up and continues walking as if nothing has happened, but if someone has seen him, the child starts crying and screaming, not because he is hurt but because the instinctive reaction is that he feels he has fallen, and he is angry because he has been seen, and that's why he tries to recover the affection by crying.

The enticement of the eyes is another instinctive element of appearing good, appearing young, appearing rich, appearing intelligent. It is another engine of history and our relationships.

The third great instinct of the world is the pretentious life. The feeling that I am more than anyone else; it is the hypertrophy of my ego, the basic egotistical attitude that considers me the center of the world and superior to everyone else so, I must always follow only what I like and force others to be inferior to me.

These are the three characteristics of the world; they are the three instincts that ruin the world in many different ways. Do not love these things. John says: "Yet the world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever.” In the second part, when he insists on love, John formulates the great theology: God is love.

"Beloved, let us love one another because love is from God." He uses the word 'agape,' an important word in Christian theology that underlines this love in fullness, the gift, the generous and total acceptance. Love comes from God. "Everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God." Whoever loves knows God.

Knowledge is made through love, not simply through intellectual reasoning; you know what you love; the more you love a person, the more you know them; the more you know her, the more you love her. It is indispensable that 'gnosis' and 'agape' be together. This is the right way. “Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.”

This is the most beautiful definition that Christian theology has produced: God is love and can be substantially love because it is a community of persons; the Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father for the Son. A community of persons in love. "In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us.” Having no need of us, He came to us to make us partakers of his own divine life.

“I write these things to you—concludes the apostle— so that you may know that you have eternal life you who believe in the name of the Son of God.” And after so many centuries, this word is still entirely true and alive. The apostles are still speaking to us so that our faith may be filled with knowledge and love and that our full knowledge of God may be in the experience of love. "I write these things to you so that you may know that you have eternal life” not because you have conquered it but because it has been given to you as a gift.

I have also tried to speak to you to communicate this knowledge of love. Thanks to the word of God and to the mediation of the apostles, we have the serene certainty of being in this life which is eternal. Thank you and farewell.