Midniht Mass: Jn 1:1-18
[or 1:1-5, 9-14]
1In the beginning was the Word,/ and the Word was with God,/ and the Word was God./ 2He was in the beginning with God./ 3All things came to be through him,/ and without him nothing came to be./ What came to be 4through him was life,/ and this life was the light of the human race;/ 5the light shines in the darkness,/ and the darkness has not overcome it./ 6A man named John was sent from God. 7He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. 9The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
10He was in the world,/ and the world came to be through him,/ but the world did not know him./ 11He came to what was his own,/ but his own people did not accept him./ 12But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, 13who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God.
14And 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./ 15John testified to him and cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.’ ” 16From his fullness we have all received, grace in place of grace, 17because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.
Christmas: Light shining in the darkness
Christmas is a festival of light in honor of the birth of the “true light, which enlightens everyone” (v 9). During the season we love to see lights galore—glorious or wild or twinkling—on houses and trees, on streets and malls.
In contrast, Christmas lights bring me back to my grade school days in the ’50s, when electricity and the barangay road system had not yet reached my father’s barrio. When we would go there, we had to walk at least two kilometers on rice paddies. On moonless and starless nights, we had flashlights for the immediate steps. But ahead and around, usually it would be pitch black, completely dark. Then at the far distance, there would be a tiny light coming from a solitary house, appearing to us gently shining in the darkness.
This image speaks to me of what Christmas is all about. Christmas is not about light streaming and flooding a place. It is about light in the darkness. As John puts it in the Gospel, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (v 5). Light defies darkness. Light lives in the darkness, but the darkness cannot overcome it.
We want a Christmas that is full of light, but this is not always the condition we find ourselves in when we celebrate the Lord’s birth. Christmas does not take us out of time. It is not an oasis cut off from daily life.
Perhaps our health is not too good, or someone we love and care for is awaiting the results of a biopsy. We are stressed out with the holiday preparations on very tight budgets. Our heart is broken by marital infidelity. Perhaps our job is not secure. We live in a world at war, a world where so many go to bed hungry, where a few fortunate ones have so much, while others sleep on sidewalks, a world where untold thousands have every reason to believe that not one person cares whether they live or die. Can we celebrate Christmas given these conditions?
It is easy to find the Child Jesus in the sharing with family and friends at Christmas time, in the laughter of children and in the joy of gift-giving. Yet, we realize that Jesus was born not in comfort but in distress: he was laid in a manger because there was no room for his parents at the inn. The first Christmas took place in conflict and in poverty, in fear and in flight. As the season’s carols tell the story, it was when the world was covered in darkness and the night was cold and there was no room at the inn that the fullness of time arrived for the Savior to be born.
Because this Child was born as the fulfillment of divine promises and human hopes, light shines in the darkness. We may have to peer in the darkness of pain, suffering, and death. But we can celebrate Christmas because the darkness cannot overcome the light.