"and he saw and believed"

Because today is the feast of St. John the Evangelist, I read John's own account of the visit that he and St. Peter made to the tomb of Jesus on Easter morning [John 20:1-8].  The words of St. John are appropriate for his feast day because they tell us a lot about him.  St. John is presented as a very perceptive person who had listened carefully to the words and teaching of Jesus and had become a faithful follower of the Lord.  This whole section of his gospel reveals St. John in a very favorable light.  He was a person whom I would like to imitate in his faithfulness and devotion to Jesus.

When I read this scripture story my attention was drawn to the last words of the story: "and he saw and believed."  In these simple words St. John tells us a lot.  He tells us that the arrangement of the burial cloths and the head covering that had covered the body of Jesus led him to understand that grave robbers had not been at work here.  It also led him to conclude that the Roman authorities had not moved the body of Jesus.  If either grave robbers or the Romans had moved the body, they wouldn’t have removed the burial cloths and the head covering.  And they wouldn’t have undone the work of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea to embalm the body [John 19:38-42].  All of this John realized as soon as he entered the empty tomb.  This demonstrates St. John's perceptiveness.  Neither St. Peter nor Mary Magdalene was able to draw such a conclusion.  Indeed, Mary speaks as though convinced that someone had moved the body.

St. John listened very carefully to the words and teaching of Jesus.  On this occasion he must have recalled the words of Jesus when He predicted His Resurrection.  He was also a faithful disciple of Jesus who was absolutely convinced that following Jesus was the most important thing in his life.  And so, because of what he saw and what he believed, St. John concluded that Jesus Himself had somehow arranged for the empty tomb, and that He had indeed risen.

The others believed when they saw the risen body of Jesus on that first Easter day.  Mary Magdalene saw Jesus in the garden after Peter and John had left [John 20:11-18].   The disciples on the road to Emmaus saw Jesus that evening [Luke 24:13-35].  St. Peter and the other apostles (except Thomas) saw Jesus that night in Jerusalem [John 20:19-24].  But St. John came to believe when he entered the empty tomb on Easter morning, hours before his first sight of the Risen Lord that night.  For me, there is deep meaning in the words of St. John when he says very simply: "he saw and believed."  During his life St. John gave us an outstanding example of how to follow Jesus.  Today on his feast we can ask St. John to help us to follow his example and to have the kind of faith and devotion to Jesus that he did.