Saturday 27 December 2025
St John
1 John 1:1-4. Let the just rejoice in the Lord – Ps 96(97):1-2, 5-6, 11-12. John 20:2-8.
A threshold has been crossed
What is it that drives the beloved disciple to run to the tomb? Joy, fear, excitement? Did he want to see what Mary of Magdala saw yet somehow dreaded it? Did he know that what he saw could not be unseen? Because although he beat Peter to the tomb, he pulled up short and wasn’t able to enter. This was when Peter’s ‘act first, think later’ approach leads him to enter the tomb without hesitation. Both he and the disciple whom Jesus loved have seen the cloth bindings. Jesus is gone from the tomb. Unbound. There is no evidence of death in a place where death is rationally expected. No stone covering where a stone is expected. Everything has changed. When the unnamed disciple finally enters the tomb, he enters into his belief. The threshold has been crossed. This is the belief spoken of in the first letter of St John: what is seen and heard and believed is the risen Christ, witnessed first at the tomb by Mary of Magdala and later accepted by the disciples who loved Jesus. This is the threshold we are invited to cross.
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