January 4, 2026
Second Sunday after Christmas
John 1:1-18
The perspective that the evangelist John offers us today with the Prologue to his Gospel (John 1:1-18) lingers for a long time on a vast and profound horizon: the very life of the Trinity.
In the Christmas liturgy, we have seen that the evangelist Luke also had a broad perspective, that of the universal history of the time of Jesus, made up of important names such as the emperor Caesar Augustus, events like the census, and places like Nazareth and Bethlehem (Lk 2:1-4).
John goes further. He does not stop at historical events, however important, but goes back to the beginning, to the origin of everything. At the origin of everything is the life of God, which is a life of relationship and love: the Father generates the Son, and the Son is turned toward the Father, in a circularity of relationships.
John’s perspective is contemplative, not narrative: he does not recount time or history, but the communion between the persons of the Trinity. He does not recount what is seen, but what is not seen.
Both evangelists, though starting from different viewpoints, then go on to perform the same operation: from the broad perspective with which they began their account, they suddenly move to a small place and time, that of the Incarnation of the Word.
Luke does this by speaking of the birth of Jesus, focusing his attention on what is the smallest and poorest that the eyes can see: shepherds, a manger, a child (Lk 2:7-11).
John moves from the eternal beginning to the history of humanity, first presenting a character: John the Baptist (“A man named John was sent from God” – Jn 1:6). The light begins to enter the world through him and his testimony. Just as in the first verses the evangelist recounts that the Son is completely turned toward the Father, so now we hear that John is also completely turned toward the Messiah. The historical presence of the Lord among us begins thanks to a man who accepts to turn his whole self toward the One who comes, who accepts to be a witness of the Lord.
At this point, the Gospel takes a further step: that Word, which at the beginning we contemplated in the womb of the Trinity, not only becomes present through a prophet, as the Baptist could have been. He himself enters history, walks among us: the Incarnation (“And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” – Jn 1:14). He comes close enough to become visible, tangible, a daily experience for every person.
This is what the Prologue wants to tell us: the inaccessible, eternal light, which is God himself in his intimate life, can now be contemplated with the eyes of the flesh, because it has come among us.
The Prologue teaches us first of all to hold these two perspectives together. There is what is seen, that is, our history; and there is the life of God, which is not seen. Yet they are the same story, and it is possible to see God by carefully looking at the history of humanity. History is no longer a “closed” story, finished in itself: it is in some way a narration of the life of God.
Faith becomes mature when it manages to unite these two perspectives, between what is seen – our history – and the life of God that is not seen. In this way, we too, like John, can say: “and we saw his glory” (Jn 1:14). The glory of God does not consist in his remaining inaccessible and distant, but in his becoming accessible and present, because this is the style of love.
The Prologue does not explain the reason for this movement of God: it neither motivates nor justifies it.
The coming of God is pure gratuitousness: it is not a reaction to our sin, nor the result of necessity, calculation, or anything that can be explained.
Trinitarian life is a life that spreads, like light (“ through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” - Jn 1:4-5); it is love that overflows.
John, therefore, does not explain the reason for the Incarnation, but offers a glimpse of the fruit of God’s coming into our flesh. The fruit is the possibility, for those who accept it, of becoming children of God (“But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God” - Jn 1:12).
This means that our history, as it is, becomes part of that life of God that John describes at the beginning.
It is not something added to our human condition, but a new birth, offered to the freedom of all, made capable by grace of welcoming the light.
For this reason, the Word becomes flesh: to generate children of God.
+ Pierbattista
