On John the Beloved and Resting in God
Hi friends,
I hope you're managing things okay as we head into what is sure to be a long winter. I'm doing all right. Winter in New York is not my favorite, but light therapy and exercise helps. I'm moving right along with book writing (deep in the suit of Wands right now and it's fun stuff), doing Advent stuff with my kids, trying not to doomscroll on Twitter, and feeling excited to turn this casual whatever newsletter into a casual saints newsletter for you.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the priesthood. I regularly daydream about being a priest and how fitting and right it would be for me in many ways. This idea is a large part of my imaginative inner life, but I also am not sure whether it’s rooted in any sort of reality. I don’t know that I would actually be a good priest, as far as the day-to-day grind of it is concerned. In person, I am quiet and annoyingly reserved around people I don’t know. Being warm around strangers doesn’t come naturally to me. I wouldn’t call myself a people person. But. The idea of the priesthood never really leaves me, because there’s something about being marked by God and for God in that way which is deeply appealing for me. I see it as a natural extension of this desire I have to be as close to God, as close to the Eucharist, as close to heaven, as it is possible to be here in this life.
On December 27th the church celebrates the feast of John the Beloved. John was one of the twelve apostles, and is generally believed to be the person referenced as “the one whom Jesus loved” in the gospel of John. He was the only apostle present at the crucifixion, and the person to whom Christ gave the responsibility of caring for Mary. In depictions of the Last Supper, he's usually at Jesus' left hand, resting his head on Christ's shoulder or leaning on him, asleep. These depictions of John asleep on Jesus at the Last Supper are numerous, and I find them deeply moving. This is how I always picture John, asleep at the table like a little boy up past his bedtime. It’s an exquisitely tender trope, and it’s one of those religious images, like the Sacred Heart or Our Lady of Guadalupe, which has burrowed its way into my psyche and resides permanently in the back of my mind.
It is the relaxedness of John that appeals to me. I am not, in general, a relaxed person. I startle easily, worst-case scenarios live rent-free in my brain, I spend a lot of time talking myself off the ledge of panic, I worry about nearly everything, I am naturally a bit suspicious of...life. Rest does not come easily for me, but I will tell you this: I breathe most freely in the presence of the Eucharist. I know a trace of a shadow of the peace I see on John’s face in depictions of the Last Supper, and I have felt just enough of it to want more of it. I haven’t received the Eucharist since March, but so much of my prayer lately has been a wordless, formless attempt to relax myself in the presence of God. To, spiritually speaking, fall asleep in Jesus’ lap. To feel calm enough, faithful enough, trusting enough, to do such a thing. John the Beloved asleep in the lap of Jesus looks like nothing less than the fulfillment of every longing I have for my life, and really all I want is to also be in that place.
The desire to be this close to God and the desire for priesthood are one and the same, I think. I want the peace of John the Beloved and I don’t know how to get to that place. (Especially this year.) I don’t know if that’s a good enough reason to become a priest. I don’t know that I have any particular talent for leading other people to that closeness, which I think is necessary for being a decent priest. John was the one whom Jesus loved, but John also was not the rock on whom Jesus built His church, and a Peter I am not. And so I’m left with the longing, though maybe that’s okay. I do think all of us have felt that at one point or another--that feeling that nothing can ever quite fully satisfy us, that something is always missing, that nothing in this life is ever exactly the way it should be. Nothing in this life can fully satisfy us; every longing in life is a shadow of a longing for heaven. I’m grateful for John the Beloved, though, for his childlike peacefulness in the presence of Christ. It is thanks to John that I know what I’m looking for. It is thanks to this art that I know what it looks like. I pray for it because I don’t know what else to do, and I keep in my heart those words from John’s gospel, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”