Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Brandon Vot, the host and the senior

publishing director at Word on Fire.

Merry Christmas, today is the solemnity

of the nativity of Jesus Christ.

And in honor of that, today we want to share

a short homily from Bishop Baron on Christmas and the prologue of John.

The prologue of the Gospel of St John is one of the richest and most densely textured

writings in the scriptures. And as Bishop Baron explains John expresses the very nature of

God and the profundity of the incarnation that we celebrate every Christmas.

So sit back and listen to this homily from Bishop Baron.

Enjoy.

Well, for this Christmas season, I thought I reflect on one of the great theological

masterpieces in our tradition and also one of the great literary gems of the whole

Western tradition. I'm talking, of course course about the prologue to the Gospel of John and it is the reading proposed by the church for Christmas Day and in some ways it does sum up you know the whole of Christianity and certainly what this day and season are about

So I'll just say a few simple things about it you could do obviously a whole semester course and just this prologue. That's please how John begins, in the

beginning was the word. Well of course no first century Jew is going to miss that

because Barashith is the Hebrew for in the beginning.

It's how the whole Bible commences.

In the beginning when God made the heavens and the earth.

John is saying the story I'm going to tell you is a story of new creation.

It's God as it were completing his creation.

God starting over again with something fresh and new.

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