January 4, 2026 Second Sunday of Christmas

Welcome Father Daniel Today’s Readings: Sir 24:1‐2,8‐12 | Eph 1:3‐6,15‐18 | John 1:1‐18

[…] Our Gospel this week is the fourth account of Jesus’ birth, given to us at the beginning of John’s Gospel. For me, this is probably the most beautiful, the truest, the saddest and the most spiritual piece of writing in the Bible. I often wonder, after reading it, how any human person could come close enough to God to be able to say, with absolute conviction, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” These words witness to a depth of prayer and a relationship with God that is overwhelming.

One of the key moments found in three of the four Gospels comes when Jesus asks his disciples. “Who do people say that I am?” and then turning to Peter he asks a much more personal question. “And you Peter, who do you say that I am?” After the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, and long before any of the Gospels were written, this question became absolutely crucial to everyone who called themselves Christian. […]

For maybe thirty-five years they discussed and argued and reflected and prayed for an answer to their question. In 70 AD the impossible happened. Rome lost patience with Israel and destroyed Jerusalem, killing the men, raping the women and carrying the young into slavery. Now came a time of terrible persecution and testing for the small, exposed communities of Christians.[…] The question, “Who was Jesus?” became more urgent than ever. If they were prepared to die for the Kingdom promised by Jesus, they had to be convinced, certain, confident, that what Jesus said was true and that he did rise from the dead.

Answering their question was mind-blowingly difficult. They had no templates to fall back on and no models to which they could compare Jesus. Different groups of Christians arrived at different answers […] Gradually, and not without tensions and conflict, the answer became clearer for them. The first three Gospels were written: first Mark, then about fifteen years later, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. It took a further fifteen years for the Christian community with John as its leader, to make the final leap of faith. After all the years of reflection and soul-searching, after conflicts and persecution, after doubts and questions, they had arrived at their answer, and what a sublime answer it was. Who was Jesus? He was God; from the beginning – from before the beginning – he was with God because he was God.

Of the four Gospels, John’s is the most reflective. […] If we want to, we can read John’s Gospel as a theological reflection and we can use it as a kind of ‘study guide’ to how the early Church understood Jesus. The other way of reading John’s Gospel, and for me the best way, is through the lens of prayer. As I said at the start, this week’s Gospel could only have been written by a person or a community with a deep spirituality and a very personal relationship with God. The Gospel is written as a collection of single statements, and though each statement seems simple and straightforward, each one hides a depth of understanding of God that is awesome.

The opening statement, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…” is one we could reflect on in prayer for the rest of our lives, always finding something new and fresh in it. We sit or stand wherever we are at this moment, with our concerns and worries always present to us. Yet even before anything was created, every one of us and everything that was created, existed as part of the eternal Love of God. Just think of that; through Jesus, the eternal Word of God, we have always been loved, and we will always be loved.

Now move from that statement to the statement… “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.” Again here we find ourselves face to face with a Love which we cannot even begin to imagine, let alone understand. The Jesus who walked this Earth was the eternal Word of God who created everything that exists. He was here among us, and we were/are so caught up with ourselves and our own tiny universes that we didn’t see him. Think of the humility and gentleness of a Love that can accept that. We wouldn’t exist at all except through the Word of God (Jesus), and he never forces himself on us, never reminds us that we owe him everything. He tells us how to find true happiness, to enter the Kingdom of God – by forgiving, sharing, being tolerant, being compassionate etc. – and then waits patiently and humbly until we are ready to see it.

[…]

And then we arrive at the last statement, “…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”. There is enough in this single statement to fuel our prayer for years. Read it, repeat it slowly again and again…. Despite not recognising the eternal Love that created us, despite pushing away that Love and rejecting it, the Word of God (Jesus) did not refuse to come to us. What Love that is! When Jesus opened the Sermon on the Mount with the statement, “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” we must never doubt that he was talking about something he experienced himself.

And so we come to the end of another Christmas. We can, if we choose, put Jesus back in his box with our crib figures, or we can leave the Jesus figure out where we can see it every day. Then each Sunday for the rest of the year, when we hear the Gospel read, we can remember that it is the same child we are reading about, and it is the same eternal Love, the Word of God, Jesus we are meeting. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”

Source of reflection: Brian Maher OMI, shortened from https://oblates.ie/pray-with-us/weekly-reflections/ Source of image: Josef Krautwald, In the Beginning was the Word. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59020

News

4 January - Mass starts with a visit by the “Sternsinger”, a large group of young people from our church, that walk around these days bringing the annual blessing to us and to many houses in the neighborhood, and collecting for the world’s biggest children’s charity initiative. Let’s welcome them joyfully and give generously!
11 January - A special day that brings together our ICCH community and the German speaking community of St. Bartholomäus: After our 1pm Mass, everyone is invited to join a New Year’s Reception, prepared by the respective parish teams, a Q&A format called “10 questions to… ICCH” that intends to make both communities get to know each other more, followed by our first social gathering of the year. Make sure not to miss this joyful occasion! You can help making it an event to remember by supporting the socials team in setting up (come at 12:30 latest!), and/ or by contributing a dish or snacks (maybe sth from your home cuisine?) for everyone to share.