From the responsorial psalm: “The LORD comes, he comes to rule the earth. He shall rule the world with justice and the peoples with his constancy. Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice!”
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John (Jn 1:1-18)
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 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.
The first words of John’s prolougue to his Gospel echo the first words of the Old Testament. Through powerful imagery of light and darkness, being and nothingness, and God invisible and God in the flesh, John connects the coming of Jesus to the long-awaited Messiah of the Old Testament. Through his life, death, and resurrection, he gives to those who believe in his name the power to become children of God. Enough can’t be said of the magnificance of John’s prologue. Only in rereading it and dwelling on it does its sweeping poetry and spiritual beauty shine brightly like the Star of Bethlehem that rested over the Christ Child.
God, help me hold on to the wonder of the birth of Jesus, that in his coming is the fulfillment of the covenants made by you with your people. In the first reading, John writes what it means to have your anointing; it is to live in the truth. He says, “I write to you not because you do not know the truth but because you do, and because every lie is alien to the truth.” Because I do know the truth but in sin tend toward lies, keep me on guard to remain in the truth. Give me the grace to turn away from what detracts from you and instead keep my eyes fixed on you yourself revealed in your only-begotten Son.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.