In classical iconography, the evangelist John is represented as an eagle. The eagle is a bird that flies and nests very high. He has an extraordinary eyesight and from the heights, he can see things that not everyone can see. And the evangelist John flies very high with this beautiful page of Gospel, trying to penetrate the mystery of the Incarnation.

John’s prologue is one of those pages in front of which one feels fear, amazement, a sense of gratitude. Rather than explaining it (it would take a lot of time) we have to contemplate it, let it speak again and again. Perhaps we will never fully understand it, there is always something that escapes and that pushes us to continue the journey to discover something new again.

For today it is enough to underline a few words.

Life: in the Word there was life. Life is the opposite of death. Jesus came to bring life to those who were in the shadow of death. Jesus came to show the mercy of the Father, to offer forgiveness to sinners, to give hope again to those who have lost it, to give the sense of life to those in despair.

Light: in the Word there was life and this life is light. Light is the opposite of darkness. Jesus came to illuminate history, to enlighten the darkness of our life, to guide us on the paths of life, preventing us from going astray or falling badly.

Darkness: darkness is overcome by light. Darkness cannot prevail. The world is bad, society is bad, it seems that the bad always win and the good ones yield. This is not the case: evil will be always overcome.

The true light: the light is true because it brings the truth with it. “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6), Jesus said. Christ is the bearer of truth, truth on God because he shows the true image of God, truth on human beings because he reveals their dignity as children of God. We are not orphans, we have a Father and this Father loves us and does not abandon us.

His own peopledid not accept him: they refused him. They preferred to remain in death, in the dark, in untruth. Didn’t they understand Jesus? Did they really want to refuse him? We do not know. We only know the design which God always had on humanity, even before the creation of the world, the design that every man could become his son, and thus have his own divine life, an indestructible life. That design is realized with the coming of Jesus Christ and it is realized in us if we welcome him into our life, every day.

The Word became flesh: the Word accepted to take our humanity, our flesh. God does not withdraw into

a “spiritual” world, but he enters history like a child. God became man, a real man, not a fake man or a shadow: a real man, with his fragility and his limitation. Let us think of the Child Jesus: like all children he cries, feeds, sleeps, learns to speak, learns to play. In his life Jesus was hungry, thirsty, he felt fatigue, he needed to rest and sleep, he died like all mortal men and women. The decision to go down in history as a man exposes God to the objections we know well: first of all, the risk of being reduced. Let us remember: “Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary?” (Mt 13:55). But nothing can prevent, today like two thousand years ago, that precisely through the human, something challenges our way of thinking. “We have never seen anything like this.” (Mk 2:12), someone said before the acts of Jesus. What did they see?  He came and he keeps coming – here, now – to search the lost man of today. God joined humanity to raise them to the true dignity of him: Son of God. God came close to humanity so as to be united with them.

In the Father’s bosom: What is more intimate than the bosom? What is more delicate? The Only-Begotten Son is God and is into God’s heart. That Jesus, the one who lives in his father’s bosom, is the only one who reveals the face of God to us. For this reason I will never stop saying and proclaiming and inviting me and you to change perspective in our faith: we normally say “Jesus is God” but let us remember above all that “God is Jesus”, because only He has the key that allows us, with him and like him, to find a place in the bosom of the father. We have no other way than the life of Jesus of Nazareth to understand who God is. Through his acts, his words, we understand who God is. We will not run the risk of creating a false image of God, as image of ourselves. Once we understand who God is, and only then, will we also be able to understand who we really are.

By doing so we will enter creation as human beings made in his image. We will be so human as to be divine, generated in the bosom of the Father, bearers of life with Jesus and like Jesus. We will be witnesses that, through an irresistible attraction, through the charm of an exceptional humanity, awaken the desire of God. And the Church will grow!

That is Christmas!