Page 12 - LOTN Spring Issue 52 2023

EDUCATION AND FORMATION

with good voices.’ Priesthood, and many other events.
Ronald has of course been playing at the Diocesan Pilgrimage Any thoughts on retirement, I enquired. The reply was
for many years, also the Diocesan Chrism Mass, for the ‘Retiring age is when I cannot climb the stairs!’
Consecration of Bishops, Ordinations to the Diaconate and

The Beloved Disciple

BY EILEEN CLARE GRANT himself a champion against heresy, believed that the
Gospel was written to counter early heresies and refers
“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he to the author as: “John, the disciple of the Lord, who also
loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, had leaned upon His breast [and] did himself publish a
behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia…”
your mother!’” John was one of the very first to be called by Jesus,
along with his brother James, Simon Peter and Andrew, all
esus always “loved his own”, we are told, so who working together as fishermen, with Zebedee, the father
was “the disciple Jesus loved”, mentioned several of John and James. “One of the two who heard John [the
times in the Gospel of St John? This is the only Baptist] speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon
JGospel that claims to have been written by an Peter’s brother” (Jn 1: 40). Again, it is widely accepted that
eyewitness and, since at least the second century, John is the other one and that both men were previously
Tradition tells us that he is, in fact, John, the writer of the disciples of the Baptist The author tells us at the beginning:
Fourth Gospel. It was quite customary in ancient times “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we
for a writer not to mention himself by name in his work. have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father,
In this Gospel, occasionally he is referred to also as “the full of grace and truth” (1:14); and at the end he assures
other disciple”. The early Church Father St Iranaeus, us: “This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these

"Saint John Leading Home His Adopted Mother" by William Dyce (1806–1864), c.1844, Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums)
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