December 31,
Jesus Christ, true light
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 to be through him …. and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race …. A man named John was sent from God. He came for testimony, to testify to the light …. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world …. No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him. Jn 1,1-18
The Russian Yuri Gagarin, the first astronaut in the history, upon his return from the space was interviewed by the journalists from the entire world. Among the many questions which were addressed, they asked him: “Do you have seen God in the heaven?”. “In heaven there is no God” said Gagarin. Grandma Rita, who heard this answer during a news broadcast while she was shelling beans in the kitchen, as a real Florentine could not avoid but to comment: “What was he expecting, to find him hanging up there like a ham?!”. It is difficult not to recognize in the harmony of the universe the mighty hand of a God creator and organizer, although some rare scientist has not really even noticed it. The christian faith, however, goes much further: we believe that God incarnated in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, by choosing to become a man among men. We are not christians because we believe in the existence of God, but because we believe in his incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth. This is the revelation of John the Evangelist in the prologue to his gospel. He announced that the Word – the creative word of God – which at the beginning of the times created the world, at some point in the history incarnated in Jesus and by his birth “was coming in the world the real light which enlightens every man”. Every time we read this verse, we shudder because the sublime heights to which it raises us: it is the premise which validates the whole biblical revelation. Jesus of Nazareth has revealed to us truths about God and the man inaccessible to the human mind. Let’s think about the upheaval of the values brought by the beatitudes: ” Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land ….Blessed are the merciful …. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness” (Mt 5,4-10). Let’s think of the parables: simple tales, which reveal to us absolute truths, which the passage of the time has not tarnished in any way. Let’s think of the miracles: signs which speak of the compassion and the mercy of God for the man. Above all, however, he has revealed to us that God is Father, love and forgiveness: truth, this, which the man alone would have never been able to achieve. One day, during a televised debate among scientists on the universe, the conductor turned to Antonino Zichichi with these words: “I see that you all agree on the existence of a God creator and organizer of the cosmos, but you, professor , how came to the christian faith?”. Zichichi replied: “For a reason which is not written in the universe: because the God mentioned to us by Jesus Christ is, above all, forgiveness”.