SAINT NICHOLAS

Byzantine Catholic Church
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23300 King Drive, Clinton Township, MI 48035   *   +1-586-791-1052   *   stnicksbyzantine@yahoo.com

A New Creation

         In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the very beginning. Through him all things came into existence, and without him there was nothing. That which came to be found life in him, and the life was the light of the human race. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has been unable to overcome it.

A man appeared, sent by God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to give testimony to the light, so that through him all might come to believe. He himself was not the light; his role was to bear witness to the light.

        The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, the world had come into existence through him, yet the world did not recognize him. He came to his own, but his own did not accept him. However, to those who did accept him and who believed in his name he granted the power to become children of God, who were born not from blood or human desire or human will, but from God.

        And the Word became flesh and dwelt 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, proclaiming, “This is the one of whom I said, ‘The one who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.’ ”

From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses,

but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

         In the first stage of the Prologue, we wonder at Jesus, the Word, whose person and existence infinitely transcend the world and history. We also call to mind creation, which is from the very outset an action of the Word, that is, of the creative Word of God, the divine Wisdom and source of life that makes the world exist). At the same time, we proclaim the new creation, for the Word offers human beings a new life that comes from God and illumines their entire existence.

         This Prologue is a hymn to the Word (in Latin, Verbum; in Greek, Logos). The term “Word” sums up and goes beyond everything that the Old Testament had glimpsed of the presence of God amid humanity by means of his Word; it includes and is superior to everything that the philosophy of the age could imagine regarding God’s reflection in the universe.

         The second stage of the Prologue calls to mind the struggle of human beings against the light. John came, a man sent to announce the coming of the light to God’s own, that is, the people of Israel. But he was not the Messiah! In Jesus, and in Jesus alone, the very Word of God became flesh, in order that the gift of the Lord might be present among us, in our human existence.

         The third stage of the Prologue expresses our conviction. Human beings may await various messiahs and various revelations, but Jesus is the only true Christ foretold by the Law, that is, by the Old Testament. He is more than a new Moses, because in him the former covenant yields place to the new and definitive covenant. He is not only the extraordinary and only One Sent, but he is the Son, equal in every way to the Father (John gives us here the perfect formulation of the mystery of the incarnation).