7th day in the Octave of Christmas – Gospel
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.
6There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.,
10He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him. 11He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
14And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15(John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”) 16From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace., 17The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
Commentary on John 1:1-18
There are three occasions when we read the Prologue of John’s Gospel during the Christmas season. The first is at the Daytime Mass on Christmas Day, the second on the 2nd Sunday after Christmas and finally today, New Year’s Eve.
This magnificent passage provides a powerful opening to this Gospel. It lays out the main themes of John’s Gospel—Life, Light, Truth, the World, Testimony and the pre-existence of Jesus Christ. He is the Incarnate Logos or Word, who reveals God the Father to us. It was originally probably an early Christian hymn, and parallels closely two other great hymns quoted in the Pauline letters—one in the Letter to the Colossians, and the other in the Letter to the Philippians. All speak of Jesus’ special relationship to God as his Father.
Its opening words are the same as the very first words in the Old Testament:
In the beginning…
But whereas Genesis is really speaking of the beginning of our created universe, John goes back much further to the infinite nature of God himself. And in this, we find the Word already existing. The Word was in a close relationship with God and the Word was of the very same nature as God.
The term ‘word’ has a number of inter-related meanings. For us a word can describe a person (e.g. man, woman, child) or a thing (e.g. house, table, tree). But here, “Word” indicates an active and creative word (somewhat akin to the power a great work of art can express). The Word, as distinct from the Father, is also seen as the instrument through which God creates:
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
And Word also points to God as the ultimate source of all meaning and reality. Jesus then is the Word of God—God’s self-communication. Through him the world came into being and through him we are led to God as the source of all meaning for our lives. That meaning is totally beyond the power of our human minds, but Jesus opens the door a little for us to see more than we could manage on our own.
The two great gifts that come to us through the Word are Life and Light. Later Jesus will say:
I AM the Resurrection and the Life… (John 11:25)
and
I AM the Bread of Life… (John 6:35)
and he will also say:
I AM the Light of the world… (John 8:12)
The Light that is Christ shines in the darkness of our world. It is a light that cannot be overcome, because it represents the ultimate values of Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Justice and Love, Compassion and Fellowship, Freedom and Peace.
The coming of the Light was prepared for by John the Baptist. He had been sent by God, just as Jesus himself is sent by his Father. John himself was not the Light, but gave witness to the Light. In addition to John, there are many testimonies to Jesus: the Samaritan woman, the Scriptures, Jesus’ works, the crowds, the Spirit and his own disciples. And, finally, we might add—each one of us.
Jesus was fully inserted in the world, the same world which owes its very existence to him, and yet it did not know him—‘know’ in the sense of not recognising him or acknowledging him to be who and what he really is. The Gospel also records, surely with sadness, that the Word came to “what was his own” (i.e ‘his own home’), Israel, but his own people did not accept him. Of course, that is a generalised statement because there were many, including all the first followers of Jesus, who were Israelites. But the leadership by and large (again with exceptions like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea) did not accept him and were instrumental in his death.
Those, however, who did accept the Word were given the power to become children of God. As such they are brothers and sisters of Jesus, the Word. And this does not happen simply by natural birth or because they were born into a particular community, but by the choice of God. A Jew was someone born of Jewish parents and circumcised, and who chose to observe the Law.
Then comes the dramatic statement: “the Word became flesh”. The Word took on our human nature in all its fullness. He did not have, as some people believed, just the external appearance of a human, but was through and through a man like us in all things. And he lived right among us. The Greek term literally means he “pitched his tent or tabernacle”. In the Old Testament, God was believed to be present to his people in the Tent of Meeting. The Word, in his humanity, is the new presence of God among us. And we might add here, that in our times the Christian community, as the Body of the Risen Christ, is now the tabernacle of Jesus’ presence in the world.
And then we saw his “glory”, namely, the glory of God’s visible manifestation of his power. Formerly filling the tabernacle and the Temple, it is now found in the Incarnate Word, Jesus, God’s only Son. It is a presence “full of grace and truth”. ‘Grace’ is the love of God as experienced in our lives, and ‘Truth’ is that wholeness and integrity which reflects the deepest values we associate with God.
And now:
From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.1
We have all been given a share of the fullness of Grace and Truth, a share which we hope will grow with time. It is “grace in place of grace”. The grace of the Old Covenant is now replaced with the richer grace of the New Covenant. And it is “grace upon grace” as the grace of the Old Covenant is enriched by the grace of the New Covenant.
Obviously, the text is very rich and dense and needs a lot of contemplation, more than can be shared in a brief reflection. And the same message is really given by Luke in his more down-to-earth story of the conception and the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. In truth, the two passages complement and enrich each other.
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- Also translated, “grace in place of grace”. ↩︎
