In the days after Christmas we read from the first epistle of St. John. To understand its message it helps to know the context in which it was written. The epistle of St. John is written in response to a crisis in the church. Certain people were claiming they were the true believers and anyone who didn’t agree with them was an enemy. For St. John, the incarnation, God sharing a human nature, meant that every human being was infinitely precious and needed to be treated as such since they bore a family resemblance to Jesus. Whoever says he is in the light, yet hates his brother, is still in the darkness. The epistle teaches that honoring Jesus at Christmas implies honoring every human being.
