About Newman
St. John the Evangelist and Friendship with God
December 27, 2025
How do we begin to enunciate the marvel of the Incarnation? For the last several days, over the course of many Masses, preachers all around the world, this priest included, have attempted to put into words the sheer strangeness of Christmas. With each passing homily, I became increasingly aware of just how far short my words fell.
John Henry Newman certainly experienced this too. Throughout his voluminous sermons, one senses his reverence for the awesome, infinite mystery he was tasked with preaching. Newman knew too well the poverty of human language in the face of the simplicity and majesty of God. That’s not a bad thing.
During this Christmas Octave, the Church invites us to rest in this spirit of contemplation. And on this feast day of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, we are given a sure guide to the brave new world the Incarnation brings about. How fitting is it, that on Christmas day, the Church’s lectionary gives us St. John’s words – words which, while so succinct, manage to encompass the whole breadth of the mystery of God’s birth in time?
“And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us…” (Jn 1:14)
There is an irony here. John alone among the twelve was known as the Lord’s Beloved. He enjoyed a special relationship with him. He reclined on the Lord’s breast at the last supper. He was given the task of taking the Blessed Virgin Mary into his home.[1] In one of his sermons on the Incarnation, Newman rightly notes, “if any there was who might seem to have permission to indulge in words on this subject, it was the beloved disciple, who had heard and seen, looked upon, and handled the Word of life.”[2]
Yet that is not what John does. Undoubtedly his writings are inspired and theologically rich, and will never be exhausted while the Church continues along her earthly pilgrimage. John himself tells us that limitless volumes could have been written about all that Jesus did and taught (Jn 20:30). Still first and foremost he leaves us a witness to the Lord who radically changed his own life. And he does so in an almost bewildering sparsity of words.
In the same sermon, Newman illustrates a dichotomy. In John the Beloved, “sight and hearing superseded the multitude of words….But when the light of His advent faded, and love waxed cold, then there was an opening for objection and discussion, and a difficulty in answering.”[3] Such was his concern in his days as a young Anglican, when he considered that Creeds posed a sort of necessary evil, serving to elucidate the faith, while at the same time detracting from its simple purity.
Indeed, Newman’s view on the subject would soften. As he became more amenable to the idea of doctrinal development, he knew that not all theological investigation was mere babble, nor should we consider it such. Truly, it was an almost necessary investigation into the mystery that St. John himself lived. Newman realized this when he asks in his Essay on Development, “When it is declared that ‘the Word became flesh,’ three wide questions open upon us on the very announcement. What is meant by ‘the Word,’ what by ‘flesh,’ what by ‘became’?”[4] Even so, such investigation must never be divorced from a reverence for Christ’s revelation. Otherwise we find ourselves not disciples, but as St. Paul puts it, a “resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.” (1 Cor 13:1)
How fitting then, that both John the Apostle and John Henry Newman provide us with an image of evangelization that is built not on an abundance of words but on love. Newman’s entire life and indeed, his entire literary output, is built on the primacy of love – the primacy of a loving God who speaks to his people, even when our own words fail.
Our world fails to understand true Christian love. At the same time, our world is fueled by the noble desire to love all people equally. Such, it seems, is our mission. John powerfully proclaimed, “Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.” (1 Jn 4:8)
How then, did Jesus actually love?
Newman tells us that John was “the private and intimate friend of Christ.”[5] And while this may at first appear off-putting and exclusive to modern sensibilities, Newman knew that it is this type of friendship that ultimately bears fruit for the salvation of the world.
Newman resolutely says, “I shall here maintain, in opposition to such notions of Christian love, and with our Saviour’s pattern before me, that the best preparation for loving the world at large, and loving it duly and wisely, is to cultivate an intimate friendship and affection towards those who are immediately around us.”[6] Without this special relationship to Christ, how could St. John have proclaimed to us, his hearers, “What was from the beginning, what we heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon, and touched with our hands…”? (1 Jn 1:1) Newman asks, “did [John] begin with some vast effort of loving on a large scale? Nay, he had the unspeakable privilege of being the friend of Christ.”[7]
What then, does all this have to teach us about the Nativity of our Lord? At the risk of a profusion of words, against which St. John the Evangelist and his namesake, St. John Henry Newman, so profoundly warn us, both of these eminent Saints teach us what it means to become friends of God.
The Church’s liturgy rightly provides the faithful with a multitude of images and readings, sights and smells and sounds. She does so not to overwhelm us, but rather to invite us into an awe that goes beyond words. During this Octave, and especially on this feast of St. John, can we let the Evangelist’s concise words open for us the infinite world of what it means to be loved by God? Can we let this Christmas season invite us into a friendship with Christ, who makes his dwelling among us, so that through John’s words, we too might experience the friendship and closeness of hearing Jesus, gazing upon him with the eyes of faith, and participating in his divine life?
Only then can we proclaim to the world what we ourselves have experienced, what we in our poverty have received. Only then can we proclaim the joy of what it means to be a friend of God.
St. John the Evangelist, pray for us!
St. John Henry Newman, pray for us!
[1] John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 258.
[2] PPS, 244.
[3] PPS, 245.
[4] John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, ed. James Tolhurst, The Works of Cardinal Newman: Birmingham Oratory Millennium Edition (Herefordshire, UK: Gracewing, 2018), 80 [page 59 in the uniform edition].
[5] PPS, 259.
[6] PPS, 260.
[7] PPS, 262.
