Second Sunday after Christmas

Readings: Sirach 24.1-2, 8-12; Psalm 147; Ephesians 1.3-6, 15-18; John 1.1-18

As John the Evangelist composed the famous prologue to his gospel was he influenced exclusively by Jewish traditions about wisdom or was there also some influence from Greek philosophy? It is an interesting question but the answer does not really matter: what matters is the profound truth that is taught in this extraordinary text which the Church encourages us to read more than once during Christmastide.

From the Jewish side there was already the conviction that the Lord, the God of Israel, had come to dwell with his people. We see it in the first reading today: the wisdom that was with God came to dwell in the midst of the people. He 'pitched his tent in Jacob', the precise expression used by John when he speaks of the Word dwelling among us, literally pitching his tent among us. God had already done that by sharing his wisdom with the people, the Book of Sirach says. The Book of Baruch speaks in a similar way, seeing in the gift of the law the way in which God's wisdom is dwelling among his people, 'appearing on earth and living with humankind' (Baruch 3.37). The revelation of the divine name in the Book of Exodus already spoke of this presence of God with his people: 'I am who I am', or in other words 'I am the one who is and who will be with you' (Exodus 3.14).

What is new in John's prologue is that the wisdom of God has now become flesh and dwelt among us in one particular human being, Jesus Christ. He fulfils what had gone before while establishing a deeper and more intimate relationship between God and his people: the law was given through Moses but grace and truth through Jesus Christ. God's wisdom was given through Moses but God gives himself through Jesus Christ. It is what 'grace and truth' means, a phrase that describes the character of God in the Old Testament, 'steadfast love and faithfulness', which is simply another version of the divine name.

What makes it now more intimate is that it is the 'only Son', who is 'nearest to the Father's heart', who is the incarnation of the Word or wisdom or law of God. In the scriptures the phrase 'only child' is almost always used in reference to the death of that child or to the quality of mourning that accompanies his or her death. So that when John says 'we have seen his glory as the only son of the Father' he is speaking already about the paschal mystery enacted by Jesus, his suffering and death on the cross for human salvation. So the birth of Jesus is a wonderful continuation of the relationship already established with the Jewish people while at the same time giving that relationship a new height and breadth and depth.

In Alexandria and elsewhere Jewish writers and teachers were in contact with the philosophical teachings of the ancient world. The philosophically inclined will find plenty to meditate on in the prologue of the gospel of John. Most powerful is the reference to being and life and intelligence which structures the first part of the prologue: not one thing had its being but through him, all that came to be had life in him, and that life was the light of all people. There they are, being and life and intelligence.

The philosophers - Plato and Aristotle and others - had reached as far as identifying these qualities as the essential characteristics of true being, of what really is. The Jewish tradition adds 'grace' to this, the conviction that their participation in these qualities on the part of creatures comes as a gift of God the creator. That gift, already seen in our creation by God, serves an even more extraordinary purpose because, as Paul tells us in the second reading, God chose us in Christ before the world was made to live in love, to be adopted as the sons and daughters of the One who creates us.

John the Baptist is described as 'only a witness': John the Evangelist is anxious that there be no uncertainty about this, 'he was not the light', he says. And we are also 'only witnesses'. But think of what it means to be a witness to these wonderful truths. It means we have received what Paul calls the spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, seeing the hope to which we are now called, growing steadily into full knowledge of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory.