Who Was The Disciple That Jesus Loved?

[Guest Guest]

In the Gospel according to John, when Jesus is on the cross and address Mary and the "disciple whom he loved" which disciple does this refer to and why did Jesus love him more than the other disciples?

[Pio Nono]

JMJ
3/23 - St. Turibius of Mongrovejo

Guest,

In John's Gospel, the most important people other than Jesus remain unnamed throughout the entire Gospel; hence, we have "the mother of Jesus," whom we know is Mary. Also, "the Beloved disciple" is commonly understood as being John himself. We don't know why he was Christ's beloved, but we can suspect that John remained with Christ at the Cross. Hope this helps.

Yours,
Pio Nono

[Adeodatus]

I just want to agree with Pio, and to add.......

As Pio said, the most significant characters in John's Gospel, apart from Jesus, remain nameless. It is likely, and many traditional interpretations and quite a number of modern Scripture scholars are coming round to the idea, that the figure of "the disciple whom Jesus loved" refers to the historical John the Apostle (as Pio said), and is meant to refer to us individually.

We individual Christians are "the disciple Jesus loved", and like him we are to lean on Jesus's breast, to stand at the foot of His cross, to receive Mary as our Mother, to run to His tomb and let Peter go in first, and to believe in His Resurrection, and to recognise Him and be fed by Him (in the Eucharist)--i.e. to be "the disciple Jesus loved".

[Carson Weber]

I would like to back this up.

From my Biblical studies so far, I have come to understand "the beloved disciple" as the Johannine Evangelist (i.e., the author of the Gospel of John) using a slightly obscure phrase (i.e., the beloved disciple) to speak of each and every Christian. This isn't to discount the historicity of this one disciple, but rather that John is allowing - through his grammatical genius - for his once-in-time experiences to be representative of each and every Christ-ian, for every Christian is a disciple who is loved deeply and personally by the God-man, Jesus Christ.