2nd Sunday of Christmas 2026
Sirach 24: 1-2, 8-12; Ephesians 1: 3-6, 15-18; John 1: 1-5, 9-14
Do you remember “the Last Gospel”? In the Tridentine Rite of Mass, with which some of us grew up, at the end of Mass the priest would turn to the people and proclaim “Ite, missa est”, from which (the word “Missa”) the Mass takes its name. Literally, it means “Go, she (presumably the Church—ecclesia) has been sent”.
However, we didn’t go. Instead, the priest moved to the “Gospel side” of the altar, and proclaimed the prologue to St. John’s Gospel, a shortened version of which we have just heard. Clearly, this had been tacked onto the Mass at some point in history—the liturgists could tell us when—presumably in response to some heresy which denied the divinity of Christ, or His two natures (divine and human) or something similar. It also serves as a reminder that what is sometimes described as “the traditional Latin Mass” was itself subject to change, and in its form was actually much further from the tradition of the early Church than the rite of Mass which we have today.
What is John doing when he gives us this, at first sight, somewhat abstract introduction to his Gospel? He is doing theology—literally, the study of God—which is one of his hallmarks. Specifically, he is putting flesh on the bones of the Christmas narratives of Matthew, and especially Luke, drawing out the inner meaning of the events which they describe.
From Matthew, we learn of a child descended from Abraham, via King David, who is conceived virginally by the Holy Spirit, born at Bethlehem, visited and worshipped by Gentile Wise Men who speak of him as “the King of the Jews”. Herod implies that He is the Messiah, the Christ, yet seeks to kill Him.
Luke gives us a fuller account. His genealogy, delayed until the beginning of the public ministry, traces Jesus’ family tree right back to Adam. He also describes events leading up to the birth of John the Baptist, whom he identifies as a blood relation of Jesus, and pictures for us the Annunciation and the other events which form the Joyful mysteries of the Rosary.
We find that Jesus is given His name through the angel Gabriel, and is proclaimed by the same angel as everlasting ruler of the House of Jacob, though He is also to be called “Son of God”. It is also through Luke that so many details of the birth and infancy of the child are presented to us.
So far, so powerful, but John’s prologue takes us further and deeper. Famously, he begins “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. Thus, we have a being known as the Word, who is God and is co-eternal with God. Everything which exists is made through the Word, who is light and life.
We are then told that the Word has come into the world, and to a people, described as His own, who have rejected Him, though some have accepted Him, thus becoming children of God. How, though, has the Word come into the world? This is the theological climax of the whole Christmas story: Ho logos sarx egeneto—verbum caro factum est—THE WORD BECAME FLESH.
In those few words, the underlying meaning and significance of Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts are revealed, clarified, and set in context. The whole narrative of the angelic visits, the work of the Holy Spirit, the virginal conception, the birth of the child Jesus, the visits of shepherds and Wise Men amount to this one simple, yet earth-shattering reality, that God has become one of us, taking our human flesh in the person of His Word, becoming the man Jesus the Christ. Thus, the last, and vital piece of the jigsaw is provided by John.
