The Eagle Has Landed

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - December 28, 2007

St. John, whose feast day the Church celebrated yesterday, is clearly one of the great figures of the history of Christianity. This "Son of Thunder" was one of the three singled out among the apostles by the Lord to be present at both his Transfiguration in Glory on Tabor and his transfiguration as the Suffering Servant in Gethsemane. He alone among the apostles was present at the culmination of Christ's life at Calvary. And when the Lord wanted to give all he had left in this world — his own mother — he chose the young fisherman from Bethsaida to receive her, on behalf of the whole human race.

Within the solemnity of the Christmas octave, however, we have to ask a practical question: Why was the feast of St. John the Evangelist established two days after the birth of Christ?

To celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family (Sunday) or the Feast of the Holy Innocents (today) within the Christmas octave seems logical because of their intrinsic connection to the birth of Christ. To mark the memorials of SS. Thomas Becket (December 29) and Sylvester (December 31) during this period is also straightforward, considering they died on the days the Church remembers them.

From the earliest Church calendars, however, we find celebrated the proto-martyr Stephen on the day after Christmas and St. John on the 27th, although no documents coming to us from the early centuries give any reason to believe these would have been the dates on which they would have died. So why mark their feasts as an intrinsic part of the Christmas octave? Why would the early Church think that they intensify rather than interrupt the focus on Christ in the Bethlehem manger?

I'll leave the question of St. Stephen to another column, perhaps at the end of next year. About St. John, I believe the reason why the early Church established his feast two days after Christmas is because he, better than any of the other evangelists, captured for us in his Gospel and letters both the divine and human natures of the infant we adore in the Bethlehem manger.

St. John is most often symbolized by an eagle. This is because St. Irenaeus of Lyons at the end of the second century applied the four figures we find in Ezekiel (1:10) and the Book of Revelation (4:7) — man, lion, ox and eagle — to the four Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, respectively. John was the eagle, Irenaeus interpreted, because his Gospel soars into the ethereal heights of Christological mysticism. Nothing in the other three Gospels can compare with poetic profundity of John's lofty prologue, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God" (John 1:1). The baby lying in the manger was indeed he "who was from the beginning" (1 John 1:1).

But if we were to stop here we would get an incomplete picture both of John and of Jesus, because in John's Gospel and letters, we do not look at Christ exclusively from elevated theological perspectives. Rather, in both it is clear to us that "the eagle has landed," bringing the celestial theology has come down to earth.

For him the eternal Word "has become flesh and has dwelt among us" (John 1:14). He is someone "whom we have heard, whom we have seen with our eyes, whom we have looked upon and our hands have touched" (1 John 1:1) The eternal Godhead has taken on human nature and has become one with us, one of us, in all things but sin; he lives with us and our senses truly testify to his presence. This landed eagle is the true perspective on Christ that captures both his divine and human realities.

We adore this Truth made flesh in all his awesome mysterious majesty on Christmas. We do so alongside the angels, but also beside his very down-to-earth Mother, foster-father, shepherds, and Magi, and even beasts.

For St. John, however, the reality of the Word made flesh whom we can see with eyes and touch with our hands goes beyond the manger and Jesus' earthly life two millennia ago. It continues every day in the Mass. In describing the reality of the Eucharist, St. John continues the balance between "wings" and "feet."

After mentioning Jesus' soaring words in his Bread of Life discourse about heavenly manna, St. John then reminds us that Jesus said, "Unless you eat — literally 'gnaw' — on the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" (Jn 6:31-71). On the altar, under the appearances of simple bread and wine, the body, blood and human soul of Jesus is united to his divinity. Moreover, we have a chance not just to observe and adore him through our senses, but enter into a real one-flesh union with him. The mystery of Christmas, God-with-us, continues in the Eucharist. St. John, perhaps better than anyone, helps us to see that the incarnation, this union of Christ's divinity and humanity, not only continues at Mass but provides us the opportunity enter into the mystery from the "inside," when he who was placed in the manger is placed in our mouths.

The feast of St. John is celebrated within the Christmas octave not just because he helps us to behold in proper balance the divinity and humanity of Christ, but also helps us to see how the Christmas mystery is actualized in the present by means of God's perpetual gift of the Mass.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.