He Is The Word

January 5, 2020, Second Sunday of Christmas. A reflection on John 1:(1-9), 10-18.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us…

(v14a)

Let me begin with some basics which we commonly ignored but are bringing us to incorrect interpretation or usage about the Word. This could be corrections to some people who misused and misinterpreted the “Word” in their daily living. They referred to or interchanged the Word as and with the words or every word in the Bible to be the Word or the words of the Lord. Our Gospel reading of today should teach us and point to the truth that the Word is Jesus Christ himself as the Word of God, of the Lord who is God himself.

Today is the second Sunday of Christmas and the 12^th or the last day of Christmas season. Today’s greetings is still merry Christmas.

The Word who is in the beginning God and was with God has been born and lived among us. Among us who are believers of God and of the love of God who took the first step of loving. God loves us not because we love God. God loves us as His creation and because we need to be loved in our weaknesses, in our vulnerabilities in our incapacities.

When confronted with discussing about the Word of God and His dwelling among us in Jesus Christ, I always echo and ponder on the profound theological avowal of the late Obispo Maximo Tomas A. Millamena that “the basis of the Church (IFI) for all its teachings, doctrines and dogmas is the Word of God. The Word, as revealed by the Holy Scriptures, is Jesus, the Incarnate God, ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ (Jn. 1:14). God, as John 3:16 says ‘sent His only begotten Son so that everyone who   believes in him may not die but have eternal life’. God sent himself   in a form of a servant (Phil. 2:5-8) that he could liberate His people from the bondage of slavery that existed in his time and still exists that they may have abundant life in fact, that was the reason for the sending and for the coming. God sent himself. He emptied himself. He became a servant and immersed with the poor, deprived and oppressed by the wicked spiritual forces, by the rulers, authorities and cosmic powers. He immersed as human being with God’s people, his own people. He lived with them, prayed and worked with them with joyful and painful experiences. That is the Church (IFI) solidarity.”

Thus, the Word made flesh and lived among us should be expressed in our being with the life and struggle of the poor, deprived and oppressed in our society. It is making ourselves, not our money nor our mere talks, available to the needy among us and in our midst.

Living out this wonderful message of Christmas and making ourselves available for others should be our daily agenda making true and making the community feel the spirit of Christmas every day. Every single day and everywhere there are people who needs us, who needs us to make them feel that the Word of God is in us.

The challenge however is to make them also aware that the Word of God, Jesus the Christ is also in them and that they also can express this Word being in them by seeing and helping others who are in need. The challenge is also by teaching ourselves that we do not exclusively own the Word of God like something that we possessed in our pockets. Lest we forget that evangelizing or teaching is everybody’s concerns. That we should not be satisfied that we are able to preach and teach to hundreds or thousands or millions of people but that we have lived out the message ourselves and also made hundreds or thousands or millions of people experienced it and do the same.

May I end this by saying that the Word of God is not exclusively understood and articulated by theologians – those who have bachelors, masters and doctors degree of theology but it is by living it out by every believer who offers himself to be consumed by God in and through and making oneself available and be consumed for the least of the brothers and sisters created in God’s image.

Until next for the First Sunday of Epiphany