Hi everyone. Welcome once again to daily gospel exegesis, where we do just that. We do an

exegesis of the gospel reading from today's Catholic Mass.

So really giving you the tools to dig into the text and what it probably meant in its original

context, which is something we need to do more of as Catholics.

So let's have a look at today's passage, which is the very end of the Gospel of John,

John chapter 21, verses 20 to 25.

Peter turned and saw the disciple Jesus loved following them, the one who had leaned on his

breast at the supper, and had said to him, Lord, who is it that will betray you?

Seeing him, Peter said to Jesus, what about him, Lord? Jesus answered, if I want him to stay behind

till I come, what does it matter to you? You are to follow me. The rumour then went out among the brothers

that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus had not said to Peter, he will not die,

but rather, if I want him to stay behind till I come. This disciple is the one who vouches for these things and has written them down, and we know

that his testimony is true.

There were many other things that Jesus did.

If all were written down, the world itself, I suppose, would not hold all the books

that would have to be written.

So that is today's passage. It's a really interesting one because the author kind of goes

sort of out of the scene and then back into the scene and it tells us a lot about the authorship

of this particular passage. One thing that's important to say up tells us a lot about the authorship of this particular passage.

One thing that's important to say up front is a lot of scholars, even conservative Catholic scholars, do think that there's something different about the last chapter of the Gospel of

John. It does appear that it was either written later or written by John's followers later on. I think my view is, I can imagine

John working in a room with the disciples with him. So it was sort of a group effort this last

...