On this Christmas morning the Church points us in the direction of the first words of the Gospel according to John.
"In the beginning..."
I wonder how long John stared at a blank page before those words came to mind. Did he realize as he recorded them that they were, in fact, the same as the first words of the Old Testament?
I think he did and furthermore I think that he saw immediately how fitting they would be to begin his monumental task of showing Jesus to have been an integral element in the created universe from the very beginning.
This would have had to be a given if he was to be able to achieve his ultimate purpose as stated in the conclusion of his gospel. A gospel written, he says, "In order that you may hold the faith that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." In other words that we come to believe that the infant at Mary’s breast is one with and equal in every way to the Father.
John returns to his magnificent prologue, his grand overture: "In the beginning was The Word."
Now, a word is no more and no less than an expressed concept. The Word is the expression of the Father’s concept of himself in all its perfection and completeness as generated from all eternity. It is the Father’s expression or explanation of Himself. It is an expression of Himself that is total and complete and lacks nothing that is proper to the subject. In this case, proper to God Himself.
Therefore the Word is, in itself, Divine. If it were not it would be defective.
And the Word became flesh and blood in Jesus through Mary, and shared in our humanity, becoming one of us without in any way diminishing His Divinity.
And so it is, says John, that on this morning, "We see His Glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth."
Thanks be to God! Merry Christmas!
Love, Peter
