A reading from the first letter of saint John (5:5-13)
Who can overcome the world
but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
He it is who came by water and blood,
Jesus Christ,
not with water alone
but with water and blood,
and it is the Spirit that bears witness,
for the Spirit is Truth.
So there are three witnesses,
the Spirit, the water and the blood,
and these three are one.
If we accept the testimony of human witnesses,
God’s testimony is greater,
for this is God’s testimony
which he gave about his Son.
Whoever believes in the Son of God
has this testimony within him,
and whoever does not believe
is making God a liar,
for not believing
the testimony God has given about his Son.
And this is the testimony:
God has given us eternal life,
and this life is in his Son.
Whoever has the Son has life,
and whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
I have written this to you
who believe in the name of the Son of God
so that you may know that you have eternal life.
The writer speaks once again about the one who ‘has victory’ (nikan) over the ‘world’ (kosmos). It is the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus came ‘by water and blood’. Does the water allude to baptism, even though no baptism of Jesus is recounted in John’s gospel? Or is this rather an allusion to the water and blood from the side of Jesus at his death (John 19:34)? John then says that the Spirit (pneuma) also bears witness (marturein), the spirit of truth, and that there are consequently ‘three’ who bear witness: the spirit, the water and the blood. The witness, or testimony (marturia), ultimately comes from God, and this testimony is that God has given us eternal life in the Son. This is the essential truth of Christmas and of Christianity.
Psalm 147 (146) The Lord has ‘sent out his word to the earth’.
A reading from the holy gospel according to Luke (5:12-16)
Now it happened that Jesus was in one of the towns when, suddenly, a man appeared, covered with leprosy. Seeing Jesus he bowed with his face to the ground and implored him saying, ‘Lord, if you are willing you can cleanse me.’ Jesus stretched out his hand, and touched him saying, ‘I am willing. Be cleansed.’ At once the leprosy left him. He ordered him to tell no one, ‘But go and show yourself to the priest and make the offering for your cleansing just as Moses prescribed, as evidence to them.’
But the news of him spread still more, and large crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their illnesses, but he would withdraw to deserted places and pray.
Jesus heals a man ‘covered with leprosy’ (pleres lepras). The faith of this man is expressed in his bowing ‘with his face to the ground’, and in his words of faith, ‘Lord, if you are willing, you can cleanse me’. Reading this gospel passage in the final days of Christmas reminds us again that he has come ‘to bring good news to the poor’, and that no-one is to be excluded, and no-one is beyond the healing compassion of the Messiah. It is not the healed man who spreads the news. The sheer number of people wanting the attention of Jesus does not allow the news to be contained, but Jesus seeks solitude ‘in deserted places’.
Why is Jesus reluctant that the news of healing be spread?
Jesus combines pastoral activity and prayer.