John The Evangelist - Feast Day

Feast Day

The feast day of Saint John in the Roman Catholic Church, which calls him "Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist", and in the Anglican Communion, which calls him "John, Apostle and Evangelist", is on 27 December. In the Tridentine Calendar he was commemorated also on each of the following days up to and including 3 January, the Octave of the 27 December feast. This Octave was abolished by Pope Pius XII in 1955.

The 27 December feast is found in the Syriac Breviary of the end of the 4th century and the Martyrology of Jerome. But at present Saint John is celebrated on a wide variety of dates in Eastern rites: 29 December for Armenians, 30 December for Copts, 7 May for Syrians and 26 September for Christians of Byzantine Rite.

The Tridentine Calendar also had on 6 May a feast of "St John before the Latin Gate", associated with a tradition recounted by Saint Jerome that St John was brought to Rome during the reign of the Emperor Domitian, and was thrown in a vat of boiling oil, from which he was miraculously preserved unharmed. A church, San Giovanni a Porta Latina, dedicated to him was built near the Latin Gate (Porta Latina) of Rome, the traditional scene of this event. The feast is supposed to commemorate the dedication of this church, and is first mentioned in the Sacramentary of Adrian I (772-95). Pope John XXIII removed this feast from the General Roman Calendar in 1960, along with various other second feasts of a single saint.

The Coptic Orthodox Church Synaxarium commemorates him on the fourth of the month tobi (January 12, equivalent to December 30 in the Gregorian calendar due to the current 13-day Julian-Gregorian offset). It records his year of departure as 100 AD, and states that he preached in Asia Minor, and that he went to preach in Ephesus, accompanied by his disciple Prochorus. The Coptic Synaxarium states that St. John the Evangelist lived over 90 years, and they used to carry him to the gatherings of the believers. Because of his old age, he only gave very short sermons saying, "My children love one another." It states that he wrote the gospel known after him, the Book of Revelation, and the three epistles ascribed to him. It confirms that he did not suffer martyrdom and died of old age in Ephesus.