This morning we wake up to the light. We take that for granted but we shouldn’t. Last night at midnight it was dark. The whole world was in darkness. It doesn’t matter that maybe you were asleep. The fact remains the whole world was in darkness. This morning it is light.
For non-believers it is light because the sun has risen. For believers it is light because a Son has been born. Yesterday we were still people of darkness. Not the darkness caused by the absence of the sun but the darkness caused by the absence of the Son of God.
But today everything is different: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone. (Isaiah 9:1)
What has made the difference for us?
As our Entrance Antiphon told us right at the beginning: A child is born for us, a son is given to us ..
Who is this child?
This child is the Word of God. This child is the word of God made flesh.
How can this be? Who is the Word of God and how could he become flesh?
Let me take an example from your own life.
When you were young you fell in love. You spoke a word of love to one another: I love you! Your word of love was total, committed, permanent, faithful, exclusive and open to new life.
Then, at your wedding you spoke that word of love in front of all your family and friends and especially, before God: I John, take you, Betty …I Betty take you, John.
Then, after some time, a marvellous thing happened. Your word of love became flesh. A child was born. At the moment of the most intimate expression of your love – in the marriage act, all that total, committed, permanent, faithful and exclusive love was expressed in a beautiful act of self-giving and receiving – and the word of love you spoke to each other became flesh.
When this little child was born to you, you could hold it up and say to your spouse: This is my love for you! This beautiful child is my love for you made flesh.
And so it is with Jesus.
In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God. The second person of the Blessed Trinity, the eternal and only-begotten Son of the Father, the Word through whom everything was created, the word of love spoken to mankind promising salvation from the darkness of sin became flesh in the person of the baby Jesus.
He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, 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 men, a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower.
Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. Jesus is everything that God is. Jesus is God made Man. God came among us as a child to save us from our sins and so to give us a share in God's own life.
