TODAY’S GOSPEL is the same as the daytime Mass on Christmas Day. In fact, this is the third time this Gospel is being read during the Christmas season and with good reason. It is the Prologue which opens the Gospel of John. A magnificent manifesto of the Incarnation when God entered our world in a very special way. Of course, God has always been present in our world but the Incarnation is an altogether new, more intimate and striking presence.

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The Word of God

"In the beginning...", that is, before any created thing existed... the Word was with God and was God. Through the Word, (logos) in the original Greek, God expresses, reveals himself, just as we express and reveal ourselves by the words we use to communicate.

God's Word, however, is not just a spoken word; it is productive, creative... "Through the Word all things came to be..." – from the 50 billion or so galaxies, which far outstrip the abilities of our minds to understand, to the tiniest sub-atomic particle.

And that creating Word brings life. "All that came to be had life in the Word..."

And this life is also light. Jesus later on will confirm that he is the Light of the world. Through that light we can see in the darkness which surrounds us, we have a vision of life, we can see the direction our lives need to follow...

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Rejection

Nevertheless, the world which had its very being through the Word did not know, recognise, or acknowledge his presence. Sadly, his own people rejected him. "He came to his own people and they did not accept him." But to those who did accept him, that is, put their trust in him and aligned themselves with him, he gave power to be in a special way children who could call God Father or 'Abba'.

Of course, by creation we are all -- at least passively -- children of God. However, here, by our acceptance of and commitment to the Word, a deeper relationship is set up with Jesus as Brother and therefore for us as Son or Daughter of God.

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Born of God and a woman

The deep mystery of the Incarnation is then expressed by John. The Word in the world was born not of human stock (two human parents) nor urge of the flesh (through sexual desire and physical intercourse) nor by the will of any human being but of God himself. God is the Father of Jesus.

Yet he was also born of a woman, Mary. And so "the Word was made flesh". John does not say -- as some translations put it -- the Word became a human being. No, he became flesh, sarx (????), a word with many negative connotations and, in Paul's letters, opposed to the Spirit.

The Word then, in Jesus, entered fully and totally into our frail human condition. A real human person who could be seen heard and touched, a person who had ideas and feelings (anger, fear as well as pity and compassion). Against the Gnostics and Docetists, who could not admit of God being in sinful, lustful human flesh, Jesus the man is no mirage, a mere appearance, like some of the figures that dissolve on "Star Trek", but flesh and blood as we are.

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Among us as one of us

"He lived among us" or, more literally, "pitched his tent among us". This throws us back to the time of the Exodus, reflected in today's First Reading from the Book of Sirach, which very much echoes the Gospel:

"I came forth from the mouth of the Most High [the Word of God]...
I had my tent in the heights and my throne in a pillar of cloud [the Word was with God and was God].
Then the creator of all things instructed me,
and he who created me fixed a place for my tent.
He said, 'Pitch your tent in Jacob, make Israel your inheritance'."
In the time of the Exodus the presence of the Lord was with the wandering Israelites in the tent or tabernacle in which was kept the Ark of the Covenant with the tables of the Law. John, then, is saying that the presence of God is now in a new tent, the human body of Jesus.

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Same as the story of the stable

All this is very symbolical and abstract in a way but it is all expressed in more visible and accessible terms in the story of the stable at Bethlehem. The message is exactly the same in both and we need both for our full understanding. For through the Word made flesh we are able to get a glimpse of the glory and beauty of God. Through him we get to know to some degree what our God is really like.

"No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who makes him known." Jesus is the pontifex, the bridge builder between God and ourselves. When we see the Child in the stable, we see God but we may be tempted to stop at the humanity as the totality. We have to keep before us the two poles of the Word that exists from all eternity and the Child born during a tiny window of history in a very small and obscure place. When we see Jesus and hear Jesus, we see and hear God in one sense but in another we are only getting the faintest glimpse of the total reality yet to be unfolded for us.

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Chosen to be holy

And now, the Gospel says, "from his fullness we have all received". The Second Reading, from the Letter to the Ephesians, speaks of our close links to that Word. "Before the world was made" – in the very beginning before all things came to be – God chose us, chose us in Christ." He chose us to be "holy and spotless"... And how is that to be done? By living "through love in his presence".

For God had determined that "we should become his adopted sons and daughters". That is our calling, our vocation. That is what Christmas is about. To live our lives in total faith and commitment to the Way of Jesus, to live in love for all our sisters and brothers