The Great I Am

Reflection on St John, Apostle and Evangelist by Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David

I must confess that for a long time, the “I AM” statements of Jesus in the Gospel of John turned me off.

“I am the Bread of Life.”

“I am the Light of the World.”

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

To modern ears—and certainly to mine—these lines sounded haughty, even arrogant. They felt so unlike the Jesus we encounter in the Synoptic Gospels: the Jesus who speaks in parables, who points away from himself to the Kingdom, who tells people not to broadcast his identity, who empties himself and walks the path of humility. I found myself wondering: Would Jesus really speak this way about himself?

It was only later, when I began to understand what “I AM” means within Jewish faith, that my discomfort began to turn into insight.

For Jews, “I AM” is not a casual self-reference. It echoes the sacred Name revealed to Moses at the burning bush — Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh —the Name that later becomes the unpronounceable Tetragrammaton, YHWH. It is not a name that inflates the ego; it is a name that reveals God as faithful presence, as the One who is, who acts, who accompanies, who saves.

With that in mind, I began to suspect something else.

What if, at an earlier layer—at the level of the Apostle John himself, the “Beloved Disciple”—these were not first-person statements at all? What if they were originally third-person Christological confessions, communicated by John to his community in the context of catechesis?

“He is the Bread of Life.”

“He is the Light of the World.”

“He is the Good Shepherd.”

“He is the Resurrection and the Life.”

That is how faith is normally taught. That is how witnesses speak. That is how the earliest Christian communities confessed who Jesus was: not by putting exalted words on his lips, but by bearing testimony to what they had come to recognize—slowly, painfully, prayerfully—about him.

If we situate these confessions at that earliest stage, they make perfect sense. John, who had walked with Jesus, stood at the foot of the cross, and encountered the Risen Lord, would naturally teach his community who Jesus is using language forged in worship, Eucharist, and baptism. These are catechetical affirmations, not autobiographical boasts.

Then comes the daring Johannine move.

A later evangelist or redactor—shaped by the same Johannine tradition—takes these third-person confessions and transforms them into first-person discourse. Why? Not to make Jesus sound self-absorbed, but to make a profound theological claim: that in Jesus, the God of Israel—the Great I AM—has taken flesh, has found a human voice.

John’s Gospel is not content to tell us about Jesus. It wants us to encounter him. The risen Christ is no longer silent; he now speaks directly to the community. What was once catechesis becomes revelation. What was once witness becomes living address.

This is why the Gospel of John sounds so different. It collapses theology and Christology into a single utterance. When Jesus says, “I am the Bread of Life,” John is saying at the same time: This is who Jesus is and this is who God is. The subject of the sentence is no longer just Jesus of Nazareth, but the God who once spoke from the burning bush and now speaks from within human flesh.

Seen this way, the “I AM” sayings are not arrogant at all. They are cruciform. John makes sure of that. “When you have lifted up the Son of Man,” Jesus says, “then you will know that I AM.” The divine Name is finally revealed not in power or domination, but in self-giving love.

It is no accident that the Church proclaims the Prologue of John’s Gospel on Christmas Day. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Christmas tells us that God does not shout his Name from heaven. God whispers it from a manger. God speaks it through vulnerability.

And so, on this Feast of St John, Apostle and Evangelist—celebrated within the Octave of Christmas—we honor not only a theologian of astonishing depth, but a witness who dared to say: the God we long for, the I AM we cannot name, has shown us his face. And it is the face of Jesus.