The Twelve Days of Christmas – Day Three
The third of the twelve days of Christmas on the 27th of December is the feast day of St. John the Apostle or as he is often named John the Evangelist.
John, a son of Zebedee fished with his brother James the Great in Sea of Galilee for their living until Christ commanded them to cast down their nets and follow him to become Fishers of Men and Women. We cannot be sure of his fate. One version is that after the crucifixion Jesus commanded John to look after His mother Mary. The other is that he was martyred in Jerusalem at the time when his brother, James the Great, was. (James the Great was the first of the apostles to become a martyr when h was beheaded.)
John wrote the Gospel of St. John, and The Book of Revelations has been ascribed to John the Apostle but it is difficult to prove it.
There are two legends about him, in the first, after he refused to acknowledge the Emperor Domitian, he was boiled in a cauldron of oil from which he emerged unharmed; in the second, he was ordered to drink poison to prove God existed, however the poison became a snake that slithered out of the cup enabling the saint to drink without ill-effect.. John was then accused of being a magician and exiled to Patmos.
No comments:
Post a Comment