The Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas

Today's Mass Readings

It’s the end of the calendar year. John’s First Letter says, “Children, it is the last hour.” At the same time, the opening verses of our gospel states: “In the beginning was the Word.” Today, we end at the beginning.

A recent survey of Americans discovered that there are fewer people who identify as religious, but also, that those who are religious are more fervent. Yet, those who are unaffiliated may consider themselves “spiritual.” I have heard “nones” in this latter group persuaded by the fact that there is something rather than nothing to believe in a higher power. Still, they will quickly state that they cannot believe in revelation. Why? It is fantastic, contradicted by science, and no one is experiencing such miraculous communication today.

In the face of such an argument, John’s gospel opens: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came to be through him.” The Greek for “Word” is Logos and means more than verbal expression. It also means logic. Not only did God create, but He is the source of both the study and observation of the world – ordered, rational – and a word that reveals the why of creation with its source and destiny. The author of this everything is God. The reason He does not reveal Himself in a more obvious way, in the words of Chris Stefanick, is like Frodo ascending Mount Doom and shouting, “Show yourself, J.R.R. Tolkien!”

Perhaps, then, the skepticism about revealed truth is not the primary issue. Being spiritual but not religious means that the accountability that a creed and a church provide are replaced by one’s own standard. St. John says in this last hour “many antichrists have appeared,” and that their “desertion shows that none of them was of our number.” Chesterton once quipped: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” Therefore, the antichrists are not proactive demons destroying the Church. Perhaps they are just those who had some doubts untreated, famished by lack of relationship in prayer, hurt by sinful leadership, and exacerbated by habitual sin. They are to be pitied not reviled.

The question for those called Christians is whether our witness, words, and prayer have anything for them? John’s gospel continues: “What came to be [through the Word] was life and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” If this power and truth are real, then in this New Year, will we start there?

Reflection by Fr. Pachomius Meade, OSB