{2}INTRODUCTION TO THE LETTERS OF JOHN{/}

This first letter of John, inseparable from his Gospel, reminds us that the Christian way is nothing less than a divinization: our own. 
From all time the Christian ideal has seemed too pale or too narrow for many people. Without directly criticizing the values of Christianity and its benefits to humanity, they saw it as limiting people. We think of all those, like Marx, who affirmed that a real human liberation involves a struggle against faith. We think of those who today rely on science to widen the possibilities of life. We again think of all those who, shunning western activism, seek in oriental wisdom a way to the Absolute which they have failed to see in Christian faith.
Even for Christians, the sentimental religion springing from enthusiasm for Jesus, the good Master teaching universal love, often hides an ignorance of the ambitions of faith. For in Jesus it is God himself we want to reach, we are seekers of truth and we want to merge into this truth from which we have come.
John affirms in this first letter: If you have the Son of God you have total truth, you are on the way to authentic love and you are in communion with God himself.
However, perhaps, we are deceiving ourselves when we pretend to be in Christ. This is why John specifies the criteria, the conditions enabling us to verify if we are truly walking in the light and living in Love:
- In Christ we recognize God himself; yet we must always remember to interiorize his actions, his mission, his way of being human.
- We believe we have been reborn from God: that does not mean that we are above his commandments, nor that we should neglect daily efforts to be worthy of him.
- Faith has renewed our knowledge of God. What matters most is to understand his love and, for that, there is no better teaching than that of the cross.

{2}2 JOHN{/}

Chosen lady: this is the way John greets the community of an unknown city. The Church is chosen and holy, just as the people in it are the chosen and holy ones of God.
John invites the people to have a steadfast and emphatic attitude toward those who do not accept the faith of the apostles. At the same time he reminds them of the fundamental law for Christians: love.
To remain zealously faithful to the Truth is to love Christ who entrusted this truth to us. We need the whole truth and not only what is most pleasing to people today.

{2}3 JOHN{/}

To the Christians who knew him, the apostle John was not "Saint John," but a man. For a certain Diotrephes, to whom John gave the responsibility of a community that we do not know, John was a bothersome old man. In order to better dominate his church, Diotrephes was cutting off the relationship.
John, however, in his three letters, as in the Gospel, speaks of the "communion" which must exist among Christians. Any church or group must remain open to others, maintaining constant contact with them. Paul also insists on this responsibility: to welcome in their homes all Christians coming from other places in order to strengthen the bonds of the common faith.
