The Pastor's Column today is really not from me. In Christmastide it is my custom to yield this space to Our Lord himself, although I hope that what I write in other weeks is not totally without his approval, despite inadequacies. Our Lord is never too busy to speak to us, and he always has something to say in time for a publishing deadline. He has in fact been doing this ever since words could be written. There is one Gospel. Properly, there is not “Matthew’s Gospel” or the Gospel of any of the other Evangelists. What they record is The Gospel of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ "according" to them but from the Lord. 

In the Gospel According to Saint John, God speaks of himself in a Prologue which is the most glorious passage ever written. It is an announcement in words of the Word that made all things and who has no beginning or end and who existed countless ages before there were writers or humans at all. What is passed on to us according to Saint John changed the world as nothing else ever has or can. This is it:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’” From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.