Catholic Commentary
Closing: Hope for a Personal Visit and Final Greetings
12Having many things to write to you, I don’t want to do so with paper and ink, but I hope to come to you and to speak face to face, that our joy may be made full.13The children of your chosen sister greet you. Amen.
2 John 1:12–13 describes the Elder's preference for face-to-face dialogue over written communication, as embodied presence more fully conveys joy and truth than ink and paper. The closing verse conveys greetings from the sister church community, emphasizing the corporate identity and mutual election of Christian congregations.
John chooses a visit over a letter because Christian joy reaches its fullness only face-to-face, not through ink and paper.
The word "children" (tekna) rather than "members" or "brothers" grounds the greeting in familial and even maternal imagery — echoing the Johannine tradition's deep concern for the Church as a generative community (cf. John 19:26–27, where the Beloved Disciple receives Mary as mother). The absence of individual names, in contrast to Paul's greetings (e.g., Romans 16), underscores the corporate identity of the church: it is the community as a whole — the children of the sister — who send love.
The closing "Amen" — absent in some manuscripts but present in others — functions as a liturgical seal, suggesting that these letters circulated in, and were read aloud within, the worshipping assembly. This is the living voice of the Church signing off upon itself.
Catholic tradition brings distinctive resources to illuminating these two verses.
On embodied presence and the Incarnation: The preference for face-to-face encounter over written words is not merely pastoral preference — it reflects the Incarnational logic at the heart of Catholic theology. God's definitive self-communication was not a text but a Person: "the Word became flesh" (John 1:14). St. Irenaeus of Lyon (Adversus Haereses, Book IV) insisted that it is precisely the bodily, sensible, tangible nature of Christ's presence that communicates the fullness of divine life. John's longing for embodied presence echoes this logic: written words participate in truth, but they are ordered toward the fuller medium of personal communion.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§1084) affirms that in the liturgy, Christ himself is present — not merely represented — and that this embodied, sacramental presence makes the Church's joy complete in a way no text alone can. The stoma pros stoma encounter John desires is a type of the Eucharistic encounter, where the Word is received not as ink on a page, but as flesh.
On the Church as a communion of communions: Verse 13's fraternal greeting between sister churches anticipates what Vatican II's Lumen Gentium (§23) and Unitatis Redintegratio would articulate as the communio ecclesiarum — the communion of local churches, each fully Church, yet mutually ordered to one another in a network of charity and shared election. The "chosen sister" is not a subordinate outpost; she is an equal in dignity, co-elect, sending her children's love across the distance that John's hoped-for visit will one day close.
On joy as eschatological fullness: St. Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on John 15, identifies gaudium plenum (full joy) as the beatific participation in God's own delight in Himself — a joy that begins in grace and is consummated in glory. John's "that our joy may be made full" points toward this eschatological horizon: Christian community, even now, is an anticipation of the face-to-face vision of God (1 Corinthians 13:12; 1 John 3:2).
In an age of digital saturation — where Christian community is increasingly mediated through screens, podcasts, social media threads, and text messages — John's deliberate choice of face-to-face encounter over "paper and ink" is urgently countercultural. The Church's wisdom here is not technophobia but a hierarchy of goods: written and digital communication can serve the faith, but they cannot replace the embodied encounter for which we were made.
Practically, this passage challenges Catholics to examine the texture of their parish and family life. Do we treat the Sunday assembly as optional, satisfiable by a livestream? Do we allow digital "community" to substitute for the harder, richer work of physical presence — visiting the sick, sharing a meal, sitting with the grieving? John's joy is not a private, interior emotion; it is made full only in mutual, bodily presence.
For catechists, small group leaders, and priests, these verses offer a mandate: the most important things cannot be fully taught on a worksheet or a video. They require the living voice, the physical gathering, the shared table. The letter is a bridge to the visit — not its replacement. Let every Catholic communication, however excellent, be ordered toward the deeper communion it cannot itself provide.
Commentary
Verse 12: The Insufficiency of Ink and Paper
The Elder opens his closing with a striking admission: he has much more to say ("having many things to write to you"), yet deliberately restrains himself. This is not merely a polite epistolary convention drawn from the Greco-Roman letter-writing tradition (where closing remarks often promised a future visit); it carries genuine theological freight. The phrase "paper and ink" (chartou kai melanos in Greek) — the most basic, material instruments of written communication — are consciously set aside in favor of something greater. John does not disparage writing; the very letter in hand proves it can serve truth. But he subordinates it to direct personal presence.
The goal John names is precise: "to speak face to face" (stoma pros stoma, literally "mouth to mouth" in Greek). This idiom, drawn from the Septuagint, echoes Numbers 12:8, where God declares He speaks to Moses "mouth to mouth," face to face, as opposed to the mediated speech of prophets. The allusion — whether conscious or absorbed — elevates the longed-for personal encounter between John and the Elect Lady's community to a register of unmediated, intimate communion. Truth communicated through physical presence, through voice, through the full resonance of embodied relationship, surpasses what ink can convey.
The purpose clause is decisive: "that our joy may be made full." The verb plēroō ("to be made full/complete") is a hallmark of Johannine theology — the same word Jesus uses in John 15:11 ("that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full") and in John 17:13. Joy is not incidental to Christian community; it is an eschatological marker of the Kingdom's presence. John's longing for this encounter is not mere sentiment — it is a theological conviction that Christian koinōnia (fellowship/communion) reaches its fullness in bodily, mutual presence. Written words can transmit truth; they cannot fully carry joy.
Verse 13: The Greeting of the Sister Church
The final verse is deceptively simple: "The children of your chosen sister greet you." John writes on behalf of the congregation where he himself is present — also described as "chosen" (eklektēs), the same honorific used for the recipient community in verse 1. This symmetry is deliberate. Both communities are elect — chosen by God, gathered in Christ, bearing the same dignity. The language of "sister" between churches is not decorative; it reflects the early Christian understanding that local churches are members of one family, one Body, sharing in a single election.