How fitting that you should ask of this feast today, for the traditional Roman calendar marks the sixth of May as the very commemoration of this glorious event in the life of the Beloved Disciple.
The Event
The most ancient testimony comes from Tertullian, writing in the late second century, who records in his De Praescriptione Haereticorum that the Apostle John, having been seized in Asia Minor, was brought to Rome under the Emperor Domitian (c. 95 A.D.). There, near the Porta Latina—the Latin Gate of the Aurelian walls—he was cast into a great cauldron of boiling oil before a multitude of spectators. By the power of God, he emerged from the seething oil not merely alive but invigorated, “more pure and vigorous than when he entered,” as Tertullian relates. St. Jerome later confirms this account in his commentary against Jovinian, and the tradition was firmly received by the Roman Church, which raised upon the site the basilica of San Giovanni a Porta Latina, with the small oratory of San Giovanni in Oleo (“St. John in Oil”) nearby marking the place of the miracle.
Failing to slay him, Domitian then exiled the Apostle to the isle of Patmos, where he received the vision of the Apocalypse.
The Theological Significance
The Church has always venerated St. John as a martyr in will though not in deed—what the Fathers call a martyr voto, or what later theologians term a baptismus flaminis of suffering. He drank the chalice of which Our Lord spoke when He said to the sons of Zebedee, “Calicem quidem meum bibetis” — “My chalice indeed you shall drink” (Matt. 20:23), yet he alone of the Twelve died a natural death, sleeping at length in Ephesus in extreme old age. Thus the Apostle holds a singular dignity: he is Evangelist, Apostle, Virgin, and Martyr—a fourfold crown.
The traditional hymn Te splendor et virtus Patris, sung at Vespers of this feast, beautifully captures the meaning:
“Mortis sacrae compendio Lætus dicasti spiritum: Sed huic negatum, scribitur, Quod ferro et igne quæreres.”
— That John gladly offered his soul through the brief portal of holy death, yet was denied that consummation by sword and fire which he sought.
St. Augustine, in his tractates upon the Gospel of John, observes that this Apostle’s preservation through the flames signified the incorruptibility of the divine Word he was to proclaim, for he who leaned upon the breast of Christ at the Supper drew thence a sanctity which neither the venom of heresy nor the violence of tyrants could overthrow.
A Practical Application
The lesson for the soul is this: martyrdom of the will—the daily, hidden surrender of one’s life to God—is no less a participation in the chalice of Christ than the bloody witness. St. John teaches us that the interior offering, the disposition to suffer all for the love of God, is itself a true and acceptable martyrdom. Let us imitate the Beloved Disciple by keeping our hearts close to the Sacred Heart, as he kept his head close to it at the Last Supper.
Devotional Suggestion
You might today pray the Collect of the feast:
“Deus, qui conspicis quia nos undique mala nostra perturbant: per beati Joannis Apostoli tui et Evangelistæ merita et intercessionem concede propitius; ut a cunctis adversitatibus liberemur. Per Dominum…”
— “O God, who seest how on every side our own iniquities trouble us: graciously grant that, through the merits and intercession of blessed John, Thine Apostle and Evangelist, we may be delivered from all adversities. Through Our Lord…”
A reading of the first chapter of the Apocalypse, or of the prologue of his Gospel (“In principio erat Verbum…”), would be most fitting on this day.
If you wish to deepen your knowledge of the Apostles and the early Church, the Lives of the Saints learning path will lead you through the heroic age of the Apostolic Fathers and martyrs. Alternatively, the Church History path begins precisely in this Apostolic Age, where John, the last living Apostle, becomes the bridge between Christ and the Patristic era.