CHRISTMAS – NOT ONE DAY BUT A WHOLE NEW LIFE
Read this Prologue of the Gospel of John (John 1:1-18) one sentence at a time, giving the Spirit within you a chance to drink in the deepest meaning contained in these poetic verses. Read slowly. Give your inner self a chance to savor life in the fullness of the person God hopes you will discover.
“In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.”1
“He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.”
“What came to be through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.”2
“The true light, which enlightens everyone,
was coming into the world.”
“He was in the world,
and the world came to be through him,
but the world did not know him.
He came to what was his own,
but his own people did not accept him.”
“But to those who did accept him,
he gave power to become children of God,
to those who believe in his name,
who were born not by natural generation
nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision
but of God.”
“And the Word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us.”
THE POETRY CONTINUES IN AND THROUGH US
Yes, every weekend we gather.
And hopefully, when we gather in God’s house, our parish church, we come to re-member ourselves as the Light of Christ of today. We find here “this life that is the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
That light is also in our everyday world. It is in ourselves and in everyone and everything around us. But, in our busyness, we deprive ourselves of the joy of remembering this hidden-but-present deeper reality. Wherever we are – in church, at home, at work or in town – we are together in Spirit with this multi-person God who, through the life and light radiating through Jesus, is our invisible and bond-seeking attraction and connection with everyone and everything.
And we come back to church each weekend to re-collect ourselves, to strengthen our shared belief in this life and light radiating in and through Jesus. Together there, in the presence to God and each other, we are “in the groove” so that, when we go out from there, we can bring more of the Life and Light of Jesus into our everyday life and the people we find there. “And the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us.”
“And we see his glory,
the glory as of the Father’s only Son,
full of grace and truth.” John 1:1-5, 9-14
May the Life and Light of Christmas shine on our hearts and our world all through the year.
Sister Loretta
- If you find the concept of a multi-person God too strange to be true, think for a moment about how much we humans treasure truly loving and being truly loved by another. Why are we made to treasure this invisible and bond-seeking attraction and connection with the other, a bonding that is replicated over and over again in the molecular essence of everything we see? Is it to direct us to discover that it is God in whose image we are?
- What do these words mean to you? “What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race”? Why would God take on a human form and live the life of a creature He had made? Might it have something to do with, or replicate in an inferior way, what a parent does in helping a baby, what a human does in reaching out to help someone in need? Jesus is “the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Why? Does it have anything to do with us today being “the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it”?