Tuesday in the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time, June 11, 2024

John 21, 20-25

Peter turned and saw the disciple following whom Jesus loved, the one who had also reclined upon his chest during the supper and had said, “Master, who is the one who will betray you?” When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus said to him, “What if I want him to remain until I come? What concern is it of yours? You follow me.”  So the word spread among the brothers that that disciple would not die. But Jesus had not told him that he would not die, just “What if I want him to remain until I come? What concern is it of yours?”  It is this disciple who testifies to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.

It is interesting to compare how the Evangelists end their particular Gospels.  Of the four, for instance, only St. Matthew concludes his in a really satisfying way: the Apostles gather on the mountain to which the Lord directed them; he appears, and gives them the great commandment to preach the good news of salvation to the world; he then promises to be with them until the end of the age, indicating that he will now return to heaven.  St. Mark’s Gospel features two endings, or parts of endings.  At the end of the first one, the Lord has not appeared to the Apostles.  The conclusion to the second leaves us wondering what Jesus will do next.  St. Luke, at least, tells us that Jesus ascended into heaven and that the Apostles returned to Jerusalem, rejoicing, but we are still left wondering about what happens next.  Of course, Luke answers that question with his Acts of the Apostles, but that book leaves us hanging as to the fate of St. Paul in prison in Rome.  St. John tells us more than the others about the Lord’s appearances following his Resurrection, but tapers off after he relates how Jesus and Peter talked about St. John’s future.  Another hand than John’s adds the brief postscript concluding the Gospel.

Why these different approaches?  They seem as different from each other as the beginnings of the Gospels.  We can say with some confidence that St. Matthew ends his Gospel as he does in order to show how urgent was the need to convert the world, and to start the clock, as it were, for the time of the Lord’s return in glory.  St. Mark’s original ending may have been lost at a very early date.  We can speculate that his Gospel originally ended with the Ascension of the Lord.  St. Luke, by the end of his Gospel, seems to have already planned to write a sequel detailing the early years of the Church and so can safely end it as he does.  St. John, though does not even hint that the Lord was going to ascend into heaven.  Of course, those for whom he wrote his Gospel knew that Jesus had ascended, but they would have known this from sources other than his Gospel.  John might have let his Gospel end this way in order to show that Jesus very much was remaining with his Church, though now invisibly through the Blessed Sacrament and through grace.

St. Peter’s question to the Lord follows the Lord’s revelation to Peter of the sort of death he would die: “Lord, what about him?”  Peter knew that the Lord had made him the rock on which he would build his Church, but he also also wondered what the Lord meant for St. John, “the disciples whom the Lord loved”.  He may not have asked out of idle curiosity but out of a desire to know how the Lord wanted them to work together in the future.  The Lord’s answer is both for Peter and for the early Christians who expected the Lord to return before the death of the last Apostle.  For Peter, the Lord’s answer meant for him to concentrate on his own fulfilling the divine will.  This sets Peter at ease, knowing that he does not have lose himself in the details of the lives of his fellow Apostles.

“There are also many other things that Jesus did.”  This fact makes it inevitable that any two accounts of the life of Jesus Christ would vary in many ways, even when they appear to agree in others.  We should draw from this verse another fact, that the Lord Jesus continues to do many things in our lives and in the lives of all who believe in him.