St. Sylvester I

The 7th Day in the Octave of Christmas

Commentary of the day
Cardinal John Henry Newman : "And the Word became flesh"

Reading

1 Jn 2,18-21.
Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming, so now many antichrists have appeared. Thus we know this is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not really of our number; if they had been, they would have remained with us. Their desertion shows that none of them was of our number. But you have the anointing that comes from the holy one, and you all have knowledge. I write to you not because you do not know the truth but because you do, and because every lie is alien to the truth.


Ps 96(95),1-2.11-12.13.
Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. Sing to the LORD, bless his name; announce his salvation day after day. Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice; let the sea and what fills it resound; let the plains be joyful and all that is in them. Then let all the trees of the forest rejoice before the LORD who comes, who comes to govern the earth, To govern the world with justice and the peoples with faithfulness.


Jn 1,1-18.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be 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. A man named John was sent from God. He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him. But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man's decision but of God. 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 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.'" From his fullness we have all received, grace in place of grace, because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father's side, has revealed him.


Copyright © Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, USCCB



Commentary of the day

Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890), priest, founder of a religious community, theologian PPS, vol.2, no.3

"And the Word became flesh"

The Word was from the beginning, the Only Son of God. Before the creation of the universe, even before time was, in the bosom of the eternal Father, he already existed: God from God, Light from Light, supremely blessed in his knowledge of the Father and in the knowledge the Father had of him; receiving every divine perfection from Him yet always one with He who had begotten him. As it is written at the beginning of the Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”…

After man had fallen he could, in fact, have remained in the glory which he had with the Father. But that unfathomable love, which made itself known at the origin of our creation, not willing to see its work in ruins, caused him to come down from the bosom of his Father to carry out His will and to restore the evil caused by sin. With wonderful indulgence he came, not clothed with power but in weakness, beneath the form of a servant, in the likeness of that same fallen man it was his purpose to raise up. So he humbled himself, undergoing all the handicaps of our nature, in a sinful flesh like ours, like a sinner except without sin, innocent of all fault yet subject to every temptation and, at the end, “obedient to death, even death on a cross,” (Phil 2,8)…

Thus the Son of God became the Son of Man – mortal, yet without sin; the inheritor of our infirmities but not of our guilt; rejected by the ancient race but the source of the new creation of God (cf. Rev 3,14). Mary, his mother,… bestowed a created nature on him who was her Creator. And so he came into this world, not on the clouds of heaven, but born here below, born of a woman. He was the son of Mary, and she, the Mother of God… He was truly God and man, but one only person…, one only Christ.