The Word of God Sunday 'B'

While Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus goes back to Abraham and Luke’s genealogy to Adam, John’s genealogy in his Prologue goes back to God Himself. John travels to eternity to reveal to us the theology of Jesus coming among us. He presents the Creation story as the framework for announcing the Incarnation. Viewing Jesus coming from God’s perspective, he clarifies the truth that Incarnation of God to save mankind was the Divine intention from the very beginning, from before the moment of Creation. The selection from John’s Gospel for the Word of God Sunday Mass lifts us out of history into the realm of mystery - His wonderful Name is the Word. Jesus is the Word of God, the very Self-expression of God.

The First Reading gives us the hint of how the word of God is present and permeates the universe and how it energizes and prompts us to express it and share it. In the Responsorial Psalm (Ps 98), the Psalmist reminds us that the Kingdom includes everyone, not just the Chosen People, singing, “All the ends of the earth have seen the Salvation by our God!”

In the Second Reading, the author tells us how God lives in everything and what It can accomplish, “no creature is concealed grom him.”

John’s Gospel gives us a profoundly philosophical and theological vision of Christ, the result of John’s years of preaching and of meditating on the mystery of God’s love. John presents Jesus as the “Word of God.” In Jewish thought, this phrase describes God as taking action in His act of creation of the world. The Greeks understood “logos,” or the Word of God, as an intermediary between God and humanity. In Biblical Christian theology, the word “Logos” came to be equated with the Second Person of the Trinity. While stressing the Divinity of Christ, John leaves no doubt as to the reality of Jesus’ human nature. In the Prologue of his Gospel, John introduces the birth of Jesus as the dawning of the Light Who will remove the darkness of evil from the world. He records later in his Gospel why light is the perfect symbol of Christmas: Jesus said, “I am the Light of the world,” (Jn 8:12) and “You are the light of the world” (Mt 5:14-16). John tells that God makes His home with us, He accompanies us, He lives with us, He shares our joys and our struggles, He eats with us, He becomes a meal for us in the Eucharist. The God who “pitched His tent” among us in Bethlehem and continues to live with each of us in our home, our apartment, our religious community, or our retirement home, and continues to dwell within us.

May we read, live, and spread the Word of God in our lives.