Christmas Day
Bishop of Lake Charles
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Christmas Day
“In the beginning was the Word.” John 1:1
I grew up hearing or reading those words at every Mass I attended — as the case might be, since the Mass was heard in Latin and read in an English missal. “In the beginning was the Word,” read the priest. In principio erat Verbum (John 1:1). It was called in the Latin rite, “The Last Gospel,” the final word, if you will, to remind us of all that had gone on before. “In the beginning was the Word.” Now, in the present liturgy, we hear those words spoken almost exclusively on Christmas morning, at a Mass that few attend because they prefer the Vigil.
I did not know it then but only later came to realize that these words had a profound effect on my understanding of what the “Word” is. The passage begins the Gospel of St. John. “In the beginning” is too similar in message not to recall the opening sentence of the entire Bible. “In the beginning” also begins the first book of the Bible, which we call Genesis, precisely for that reason. God begins His creation in Genesis and St. John wants us to know that in Christ, His Son, He is beginning His re-creation.
The “Word” that St. John describes “was with God” (John 1:1). As a matter of fact, “… the Word was God” (John 1:1). This Word was with God from the beginning, but since we know God has no beginning, the beginning spoken of is the created reality that we experience, the object of our measurement and temporal definitions. “All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be” (John 1:3). This Word is pre-existent. This Word is eternal. This Word is Jesus Christ. “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” (John 1:14). Oh, mystery!
You see the reason that “Last Gospel” changed my understanding of the “Word” is because St. John was proclaiming something more than a written word. I was a child, then, and like a child I was learning the meaning of “words” in school, studying their definitions and spellings. However, every time I went to Mass I would hear of a Word that existed before time and took flesh. And to further emphasize those words, we would genuflect when those words were spoken. Could a word be immaterial? Or, more importantly, could a word have a meaning that transcended its written form? Without a doubt this was true, if we were to believe St. John. I could not help but think that what St. John said was true, because I saw it particularly lived out at Christmas.
Christmas has always been a special time for me. I hope that it continues to be for all of you. What happens at Christmas? There is a meal and gathering like no other at any other time of the year. There are presents, trees with lights, special music and singing—but most especially words. I heard my grandmother and my aunts tell stories, and to do so they used words. There were reminiscences, remembrances of things past, which were told at other times of the year, but at Christmas took on a hallowed aspect because they were surrounded with the trappings of manger scenes and lights, exquisite food and sparkling gifts.
“Mom,” I asked my grandmother once following dinner as the family sat visiting over coffee in the dining room, “What does collation mean?” The old French word had puzzled me. She answered, “What we are doing now, sitting around the table talking.” A sharing of words, ideas, stories? I thought it meant a meal. I could not help but think that what she said had come from another time, perhaps some colloquial meaning of the word that had been passed down from 18th Century France, as only one could encounter in Southwest Louisiana. A collation was a meal at which a sharing took place that involved more than words. It was conversation, the exchange of ideas, the communication of family and friends in love, with good cheer and happiness at being together.
Did God not engage in collation? He most certainly did. There was never a doubt in my mind. He invited us to a banquet, the Eucharist, and sat and talked to us through His prophets, His apostles, and most especially through Jesus, His Son. “What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race” (John 1:3). The Word brought life. The Word made flesh was “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
In the modern world, words have become cheap. With IPods and text-messaging, our shortcuts and abbreviations, with the jargon of a more complicated and complex world, a world full of words with seemingly little meaning, sometimes I think we are experiencing the results of placing too much emphasis upon a written word. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). From before the beginning, the Word was more than a written word. It was a Revelation, or better yet, an act of love bursting forth, coming down from heaven, fracturing the boundaries of whatever might confine it, including human sin, and entering the stage of human discourse so that creation would never be the same again. In this way, we could receive “from his fullness… grace in place of grace” (John 1:16).
I thought of that when I was a child but not in the same way, when my mother would ask me to play on the piano her favorite Christmas carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem. I heard angels breaking into song on a cloudless, chilly night in the city of David, through carols sung around a tree, and their words announcing a mystery that was as compelling as the desire to be with family on the birthday of the Prince of Peace. It is a mystery no one can take from us because it is bigger than written words, though we must use them out of frustration to express our deepest truth. There are words that mean more because they tell us of an eternal “Word,” at a collation that only God could have prepared. “[H]e has spoken to us through the Son, whom he made heir of all things and through whom he created the universe, who is the refulgence of his glory, the very imprint of his being, and who sustains all things by his mighty word” (Hebrews 1:3).