The Apostle John was especially loved by the Savior for his sacrificial love and virginal purity. After his vocation, the apostle did not part with the Lord and was one of the three disciples whom He especially brought closer to Himself. Saint John the Theologian was present at the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus by the Lord and witnessed the Transfiguration of the Lord on Tabor. During the Last Supper, he reclined next to the Lord and, at a sign from the Apostle Peter, leaned against the Savior's chest and asked for the traitor's name. The Apostle John followed the Lord as He was led bound from the Garden of Gethsemane to the judgment of the lawless high priests Anna and Caiaphas, while he was in the bishop's courtyard interrogating his Divine Teacher and relentlessly followed Him along the Way of the Cross, grieving with all his heart. 
At the foot of the Cross, he wept with the Mother of God and heard the words of the Crucified Lord addressed to Her from the height of the Cross: "Woman, this is your son.": "Behold thy mother" (John 19:26-27). From that time on, the Apostle John, as a loving son, took care of the Blessed Virgin Mary and served Her until Her Dormition, never leaving Jerusalem. After the Dormition of the Mother of God, the apostle John, according to his lot, went to Ephesus and other cities of Asia Minor to preach the Gospel, taking with him his disciple Prochorus. They set off on a ship that sank during a violent storm. All the travelers were thrown ashore, only the apostle John remained in the depths of the sea. Prochorus wept bitterly, having lost his spiritual father and mentor, and went to Ephesus alone. On the fourteenth day of the journey, he was standing on the seashore and saw that a wave had washed a man ashore. Approaching him, he recognized the apostle John, whom the Lord had kept alive for fourteen days in the depths of the sea. The teacher and the disciple went to Ephesus, where the apostle John constantly preached to the Gentiles about Christ. His preaching was accompanied by numerous and great miracles, so that the number of believers increased every day. At this time, the persecution of Christians by Emperor Nero began. The Apostle John was taken to Rome for trial. For confessing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the apostle John was sentenced to death, but the Lord saved His chosen one. The apostle drank the cup of deadly poison offered to him and remained alive, then emerged unharmed from the cauldron of boiling oil into which he had been thrown by order of the tormentor. After that, the Apostle John was exiled to the island of Patmos, where he lived for many years. On the way to the place of exile, the Apostle John performed many miracles. On the island of Patmos, the sermon, accompanied by miracles, attracted to him all the inhabitants of the island, whom the apostle John enlightened with the light of the Gospel. He cast out numerous demons from idolatrous temples and healed a great many sick people. The Magi, through various demonic obsessions, put up great resistance to the preaching of the holy apostle. Especially terrifying was the arrogant magus Kinops, who boasted that he would bring the apostle to death. But the great John, the Son of Thunder, as the Lord Himself called him, by the power of God's grace working through him, destroyed all the devilish tricks that Kinops had hoped for, and the proud magus died ingloriously in the depths of the sea.
The Apostle John retired with his disciple Prokhor to a deserted mountain, where he imposed on himself a three-day fast. During the prayer of the apostle, the mountain shook, thunder rumbled. Prokhor fell to the ground in fear. The Apostle John picked him up and ordered him to write down what he would say. "I am Alpha and Omega, the firstfruits and the end, saith the Lord, Who is, who is, and who is to come, the Almighty" (Revelation 1:8), the Spirit of God proclaimed through the holy apostle. That's how the Book of Revelation (the Apocalypse) was written around the year 67 the Holy Apostle John the Theologian. This book reveals the secrets of the fate of the Church and the end of the world.
After a long exile, the apostle John was freed and returned to Ephesus, where he continued his work, teaching Christians to beware of false teachers and their false teachings. Around the year 95, the Apostle John wrote the Gospel in Ephesus. He called on all Christians to love the Lord and each other and thereby fulfill the commandments of Christ. The Church calls St. John the Apostle of love, because he constantly taught that without love a person cannot approach God. The three epistles written by the Apostle John speak about the meaning of love for God and others. Already in old age, having learned about a young man who had gone astray and became the leader of a band of robbers, the apostle John went to look for him in the desert. When the guilty man saw the holy elder, he began to hide, but the apostle ran after him and begged him to stop, promising to take the young man's sin upon himself, so that he would repent and not ruin his soul. Touched by the warmth of the holy elder's love, the young man truly repented and corrected his life.
The Holy Apostle John died at the age of over one hundred years. He far outlived all the other eyewitnesses of the Lord, remaining for a long time the only living witness of the Savior's earthly ways.
When the time came for the Apostle John to depart to God, he withdrew outside Ephesus with seven of his disciples and ordered a cruciform grave to be prepared for himself in the ground, into which he lay down, telling the disciples to fill it with earth. The students wept and kissed their beloved mentor, but, not daring to disobey, they obeyed his command. They covered the saint's face with a handkerchief and buried the grave. Upon learning about this, the rest of the apostle's disciples came to the place of his burial and excavated the grave, but found nothing in it.
Every year, on May 8, thin ashes emerged from the grave of St. John the Apostle, which the faithful collected and cured of their diseases. Therefore, the Church also celebrates the memory of St. John the Theologian on May 8.
The Lord gave his beloved disciple John and his brother the name of the "Sons of Thunder", a messenger of the heavenly fire, terrifying in its purifying power. In this way, the Savior pointed to the fiery, fiery, sacrificial nature of Christian love, which was preached by the Apostle John the Theologian. The eagle is a symbol of the high soaring of theological thought, an iconographic sign of the Evangelist John the Theologian. Of the disciples of Christ, the Holy Church gave the name of the Theologian only to Saint John, the seer of the Destinies of God.