John the Apostle at the Death of the Virgin

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Death of the Virgin, c. 1564, grisaille, Upton House, Banbury, Oxfordshire, England, first owned by the famous Antwerp cartographer, and friend of Bruegel, Abraham Ortelius, and later owned by the Flemish painter, Peter Paul Rubens.



Philips Galle's 1574 engraving thereafter, published by Galle and Ortelius, jointly.


"John the Apostle at the Death of the Virgin"

Scholars for years have wondered about John,
As placed apart in the Virgin's bedroom, and
Not only apart, but asleep, when all others
So attentive around the bedside of Mary,
Virgin and mother of God Incarnate.
Mary, soon to depart, to rejoin her son,
Readied for her transition from this world
To the next, to throw off her mortal coil,
And be robed in immortality, by her own Son.
Why sleeps John, at such a moment?

Why sleeps John, indeed? Why John?
John, with his brother James, and Peter,
Disciples, the closest three to Jesus.
Among these three, John singled out,
In Christ's last earthly legacy, to John
He entrusted the care of his mother.
Was he, the care-giver, now worn out?
Relieved his burden to let go? Tired
Beyond the understanding of the others,
Who had not known his singular burden?

Peter, James, and John, these three,
Consider all they shared with Christ:
They alone did witness the raising of
Jarius's daughter, saw life restored
To a girl, already dead. They alone
Were witness to Christ's Transfiguration,
Glimpsing this man as also divine.
They alone remained as witnesses
To Christ's lone agony in the garden
of Gethsemane, time of deep rue.

How our Lord with his Father did struggle,
Beseeching Him, with sweat and blood,
Falling as teardrops from his agonized brow,
Resistant to his fate, imploring God
To let pass this bitter, but inevitable cup.
What did Peter, James, and John, his companions,
In this dark hour? With him watchful? No!
They all did fall asleep! And so it was again!
Mary, now, his special charge, in her last hour,
And John, he sleeps, or dreams of Patmos.

--John W, Dec 10, 2009,
having been taken by admired Bruegel,
to the Virgin's bedchamber, in the home of John,
leaving me wondering, am I sleeping, dreaming,
when I should be watchful?-Can we each see
ourselves as the exhausted, self-absorbed
companions of those closest to us, in their
time of need? And yet, what mercy, what grace,
for sleepy-head John was ever called, "the
disciple whom Jesus loved;" and to him was
entrusted, if tradition be correct, when on Patmos,
the most extraordinary of all visions that
man has ever had, the vision of end times
and eternity, as recorded in the Bible's
Book of Revelation, from the hand of John.