Today we celebrate the feast of St John, one of Jesus' twelve Apostles and one of the privileged inner group which also included Peter and John's brother, James. Today's readings emphasise the deep faith of John in Jesus as expressed in the reading from the First Letter of John and the scene of the Beloved Disciple going to the tomb with Peter on Easter Sunday morning. Both Peter and the Beloved Disciple see the arrangement of cloths in the tomb but it is only the Beloved Disciple who, because of his deeper insight into the meaning of Jesus' life, recognises the significance of what he sees. It says to him clearly: 'The Lord is risen.' In the First Reading we are told that the Jesus whom John's community speaks about is Someone they have seen with their own eyes, have watched and touched. But, more than that, he is for them "the Word, who is life". Their experience of Jesus is first hand but it goes far beyond what they saw with their eyes. It goes to the deep communication, the Word, that God brought to them through Jesus. Let us today, like those early followers of Jesus, listen very carefully to the message that comes to us through the Scriptures and pray for the guidance of the Spirit to penetrate its inner meaning so that our lives and the lives of those around us may be transformed.