Basic HTML Version
T
HE
S
EVENTH
D
AY
IN
THE
O
CTAVE
OF
C
HRISTMAS
1 John 2:18-21
Ps 96:1-2, 11-12, 13
John 1:1-18
S
UMMARY
John rallies his congregation to stay focused and avoid the allure of every new
spin-master. The psalm is a joyous response to the Lord's reliability and justice.
John begins his Gospel by identifying Jesus' intimate relationship to the Author of
creation.
R
EFLECTION
There is a microscopic moment we've all witnessed in a science class or in a
public television video when the nucleus of a cell begins to recreate itself, so
there are, for a moment, two nuclei sharing a single space which then seems to
grow in enthusiasm until it bursts apart in a tension-filled finale, like two lovers
releasing from a kiss. As they finally separate into two distinct cells, each a re-
flection of the other, there is a final stretching toward each other, an almost des-
perate attempt to stay conjoined that is only broken by the equally driven need to
be unique--new, refreshed, begotten. This is the sort of image that John is try-
ing to cast as the basis for his divine portrait of Jesus in his latter day Gospel
narrative.
John is no reporter. He would be fired from any newspaper worth its salt. He is
a mystic and he seriously engages the mystic's journey into the land where the
perceptions of reality as commonly beheld are insufficient to express the mind-
boggling core that undergirds all we see. It's always been the duty of the poet,
artist and mystic to shoot a flare into the night sky of consciousness and expose
what was there all the time but missed by common vision. It's scary, unsettling,
and invigorating stuff.
John gives voice to the unbelievable assertion that Jesus, who appeared later,
was there at the beginning. Not God, but God, because He was of God. As an
exercise in down-to-earth, pay-the-rent logic, this is nonsense. As a rocket into
the sky, it is stunningly beautiful in its rapturous exposure that what we usually