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Manila Bulletin devider Opinion devider He saw and believed

He saw and believed

Published Dec 27, 2025 12:05 am  |  Updated Dec 26, 2025 05:27 pm
REFLECTIONS TODAY
The hero of the community nurtured by the Fourth Gospel is “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (verse 2). He outruns Peter to the tomb but lets the “older” Peter enter first. He also “outruns” Peter in believing that Jesus is risen from the dead (verse 8).
Among the Apostles, he alone remained near Jesus at the foot of the cross on Calvary (19:26). As his last legacy, Jesus entrusted Mary, his mother, into the care of the Beloved Disciple (19:27). John the Evangelist is the name traditionally given to the Beloved Disciple who wrote the Fourth Gospel, known as the Gospel of John.
The evangelist selected materials from the many “signs” that Jesus performed with one purpose: “That you may [come to] believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name” (20:31).
In the Prologue, he traces the origin of Jesus, “He was in the beginning with God” (1:2). He selected only seven miracles and called them “signs,” explaining their meaning visà-vis the person of Jesus.
Pope Benedict XVI calls John “The Theologian”— the theologian of love. John wants to say that the essential constituent of God is love and hence, that all God’s activity is born from love and impressed with love: all that God does, he does out of love and with love, even if we are not always immediately able to understand that this is love, true love.
Gospel • John 20:1a, 2-8
On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we do not know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first; he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed.
Source: “365 Days with the Lord 2025,” St. Paul’s, 7708 St. Paul Rd., SAV, Makati City (Phils.); Tel.: 632-895-9701; E-mail: [email protected]; Website: http://www.stpauls.ph.
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