Long time Catholics will remember that in the pre-Vatican II Mass there was something called “the Last Gospel.” At the conclusion of all of the prayers and post-communion the priest would recite the prologue to St. John’s Gospel at every mass. Obviously the Church thought that this reading needed lots of attention. The prologue itself is a carefully constructed Greek poem. St. John has created a structure in the poem to highlight his central point. The central point is not “the word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Rather situated at the heart of the poem is this idea: “To those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God.” The reason the word became flesh was for us, to help us become who we were made to be, children of God. Jesus was born in the midst of human life so that we would all have a share in his divine life. As St. John puts it later in his gospel, Jesus came so that we would “have life and have it to the full.”
