[In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen]. There are so many beautiful images that the Scriptures bring to our imaginations about the Nativity of the Lord. Maybe we think of Joseph leading Mary on a donkey as she travels to Bethlehem while being nine months pregnant. Or maybe we think of them going up to inns, trying to see if there’s room, but not finding anything. Because of St. Francis of Assisi, we may think of them in a barn-like structure, though the older tradition is that our Lord was born in a cave. We may think of the shepherds seeing the angels, hearing them sing the Gloria, and then going to find the Christ Child. Based upon the Christmas carol, we might even think about a little boy with his snare drum playing for the Holy Family (which is probably not what a woman who has just given birth wants to hear). So which of these accounts do we hear as we come to Mass today on Christmas morning/afternoon? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was God….And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” And yet, according to one scholar, John’s prologue was the traditional Gospel for Christmas Day from the time of the earliest lectionaries, or collections of readings for the Mass.
So why this Gospel? Why this elevated reflection Christ as the Logos, the Word? This prologue is really the Gospel writ small. It precedes, in a sense, Genesis, and concludes, in a sense the Book of Revelation. It starts at the beginning, but even before “In the beginning” from Genesis, because it speaks of the time when there was simply God, and nothing else. It talks about the perennial back and forth between light and darkness, an unequal battle that entered humanity’s realm by the disobedience of Adam and Eve. But it also talks about those who belong to God, are enabled to become His children, through this same Logos, this same Word, Jesus Christ.
All of the stories with which we are familiar–Mary and Joseph, the inns, the stable or cave, the shepherds–John encapsulates in the pithy phrase, “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” John, who wrote this Gospel around the year AD 90, already had the witness of Matthew and Luke giving their own infancy narratives. But there is more to Christmas than just a baby. There is also the aspect that this baby brought us the grace to be freed from the slavery to the law. Christ gave us more than just a new law. He gave us Himself: “From his fullness…grace in place of grace.” And John, even in just this first part of the first chapter, is able to start to tease out the invisible realities which this visible baby brought forth.
Other than today and on Holy Thursday, in the Extraordinary Form, this Gospel passage is read at the end of each Mass and is called the Last Gospel. This practice began in England in what is called the Sarum Rite from the twelfth century. Between the eleven hundreds and the fifteen hundreds, it was a private prayer for the priest to say after Mass. Pope St. Pius V added it to every Mass (with few exceptions) in 1570. It was eliminated in the post-Conciliar changes to the Missal in 1965.
But the value is that, at the end of each Mass in the Extraordinary Form, priest and people are reminded of this overarching theme of salvation: God in Himself; God in the Incarnation; God’s grace and truth given to us to become children of God, a revelation only made possible by the Incarnation of the Eternal Word. And the Eucharist, just received at the time of the Last Gospel, is precisely the same Word, who strengthens the individual Catholic in the Theo-drama of God’s victory of light over darkness and holiness over sin.
This focus on the divinity of Christ also reminds us of the power of Christmas over all the other ways that God communicated. The Letter to the Hebrews adeptly reminds us that God has spoken to us in partial and various ways. He walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. He spoke to Noah and commanded him to build an ark to save the righteous. He called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees. He called Moses to free His people from bondage in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. He anointed David to be the king and shepherd of His people, Israel. He gave Solomon the plan for the Temple and dwelt there. He sent prophets to remind the people of their commitment to follow God and the consequences if they did not. And all of those were good.
But at that first Christmas, God chose to speak for Himself. An ambassador is a good communication of the wishes and expectations of a ruler. But the ruler himself communicates in a way that far surpasses a spokesman. A picture or a painting can capture some of the beauty of a landscape. But to be in the presence of the reality far surpasses any representation of that beauty. Our Lord is the ruler. Our Lord is the beautiful landscape. And in encountering Him, in the Incarnation, we have the chance to appreciate the reality beyond the shadows the prefigured it.
This may not be the Christmas Gospel we anticipate. But it’s the Christmas Gospel that explains not just that day, but all of salvation history. This Prologue reminds us that Christmas is not just about the baby that we see with our eyes, but the God that we see with our faith. May our appreciation of the Word made Flesh, spur us on to live in the grace and truth that come from Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit are one God, for ever and ever. Amen.