Saturday, December 27, 2014

St. Augustine: "John the Evangelist"

"John the Evangelist, among his fellows and companions the other Evangelists, received this special and peculiar gift from the Lord (on whose breast he reclined at the feast, hereby to signify that he was drinking deeper secrets from His inmost heart), to utter those things concerning the Son of God which may perhaps rouse the attentive minds of the little ones, but cannot fill them, as yet not capable of receiving them; while to minds, of somewhat larger growth, and coming to a certain age of inner manhood, he gives in these words something whereby they may both be exercised and fed."

~St. Augustine: Tractates (Lectures) on the Gospel of John, 18, 1.

St. John the Evangelist, by Camillo Rusconi.
Marble, 1715-18; San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome.