Gospel of Saint John

In this final lecture of our study of the Gospel of Saint John, we come to the dawn of Easter—and discover that the Resurrection is not simply the triumphant ending of the story. It is the beginning of the Church’s mission.

• (00:00) - The Final Lecture: Closing the Gospel of Saint John
• (01:22) - The Risen Christ Turns Our Attention to the Church
• (03:42) - Piety, Holiness, and the Realism of the Resurrection
• (05:52) - The Gospel as an Inverted Mountain: Heaven, Tomb, Heaven
• (07:29) - The Resurrection and the Fruitfulness of Love
• (09:39) - The Gospel as New Creation and Mission
• (10:05) - Do Not Live in Two Parallel Worlds
• (11:05) - From Petition to Contemplation: Sitting at the Feet of Christ
• (13:28) - The Holy Spirit Instructs the Heart
• (15:10) - Recapitulation: Creation, Cana, and the Wedding Feast
• (15:59) - Mary Magdalene: From the Darkness of the Tomb to the Light
• (18:28) - Christ Veiled in Our Brothers and Sisters
• (19:44) - The Risen Christ and the Mission to All Nations
• (22:16) - All the Signs Point to Easter
• (23:19) - Abiding in the Peace of Christ
• (25:21) - The Sacramental Life of the Church
• (26:52) - Peter: “Do You Love Me? Feed My Sheep”
• (28:56) - Thomas: From “Come and See” to “My Lord and My God”
• (31:44) - Unanswered Prayer, Work, and the School of Faith
• (33:10) - The Whole Gospel: Conquest, Kingdom, Cross, and Transformation
• (35:14) - Mary Magdalene and the New Adam in the Garden
• (36:43) - Learning to Wait Before God
• (39:32) - Peter and John at the Tomb: Contemplation and Obedience
• (43:09) - Fear, Weakness, and the Saints Christ Builds
• (44:23) - The Holy Spirit and the Forgiveness of Sins
• (46:19) - Why Saint John Wrote: “That You May Believe”
• (48:33) - Faith, Grace, and the Illumination of the Intellect
• (50:10) - The Miraculous Catch and the Mission of the Church
• (51:24) - Plant the Seed and Let It Go
• (52:18) - Final Charge: Make the Gospel a Way of Life
• (53:08) - Closing Prayer
• (54:05) - Farewell and the Future of Qorbono

You can download the slides and notes for this lecture here.

Saint John gives surprisingly little space to the event of the Resurrection itself. Instead, he turns our attention immediately toward what the risen Christ does: He gives His peace, breathes the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, grants the authority to forgive sins, restores Peter, entrusts him with the care of the flock, and sends the Church into the world.

This final lecture also looks back over the whole Gospel as one great movement: from heaven, into the depths of the tomb, and back to glory. The Gospel becomes a pattern for our own lives—a new creation, a passage from darkness to light, from self-reliance to grace, from fear to mission, and ultimately from death to resurrection.

We follow Mary Magdalene from the darkness of the empty tomb into the light of recognition; Thomas from doubt to the confession, “My Lord and my God”; Peter from betrayal to shepherd; and the apostles from fear behind locked doors to the Church's mission.

Above all, this lecture issues one final challenge: do not leave the Gospel in the Bible study room. Do not live in two parallel worlds—one shaped by Scripture and another governed by ordinary life. Let the Gospel become the pattern by which you interpret your suffering, your relationships, your work, your prayer, your failures, and your hope.

The last word of the risen Christ is not simply, “Remember Me.”

It is: “Follow me.”