The Gospel of Christmas Day

In my recent column at Commonweal I discussed the reading of the prologue of John’s gospel at the Mass of Christmas day, and specifically why the Lukan narrative is so often substituted for it.

One of the reasons you hear for setting aside the prologue is that it’s “too abstract.” But that’s not actually a fair description. It’s better understood as mystical, and that is something different.

My column makes a case for reading John on Christmas day. You can read it here.

In our comment thread, I would ask you to please keep the discussion on Christmas readings, as that is the topic of this thread.

Rita Ferrone

Rita Ferrone is an award-winning writer and frequent speaker on issues of liturgy and church renewal in the Roman Catholic tradition. She is currently a contributing writer and columnist for Commonweal magazine and an independent scholar. The author of several books about liturgy, she is most widely known for her commentary on Sacrosanctum Concilium (Liturgy: Sacrosanctum Concilium, Paulist Press). Her most recent book, Pastoral Guide to Pope Francis's Desiderio Desideravi, was published by Liturgical Press.

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Comments

30 responses to “The Gospel of Christmas Day”

  1. Lee Bacchi

    There is also a great deal of religious sentiment behind choosing the Luke 2 reading. Whereas the Johannine prologue contains the important proclamation of 1:14. The parish where I Mass supply prints reagins in their worship aid, and so it has to be the same gospel for all 5 Masses, and guess which one it is?!

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  2. Michelle Francl-Donnay

    After weeks of hearing some version of the nativity story caroling from every loudspeaker I get near (or at least when it’s not playing a Holly Jolly Christmas), John’s Gospel seems like a moment of birth to my mind, baptismally washing out the saccharine and secular that serves will us or will us not as an entrance ramp to the solemnity these days.

    Perhaps that’s not what everyone is expecting, and presents challenges to a homilist, but I agree with Rita, it’s a gift worth opening on Christmas morning. Unexpected gifts can be the most delightful.

    Rita’s challenge a few years ago led Fr. Cody Unterseher to post on PrayTell a luminous homily on the text, that traces that trajectory she speaks to in her Commonweal piece.

    https://praytell.blog/index.php/2010/12/09/preaching_the_incarnation/

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    1. Alan Griffiths

      @Michelle Francl-Donnay:

      Hear ! Hear ! I once had a disagreement with my Parish Priest when I read John 1:1-18 on Christmas Day at Mass. He wanted the Luke story and was very aggrieved when I refused to use it for the Mass of the Day.

      He said that ‘people don’t understand it.’ I retorted that I first read this text out loud at the age of about 9, from the King James Bible, in the (C. of E.) Church in London where I was a choirboy.

      I said that ‘Of course I didn’t understand it. But I have never forgotten a word of it, either.’ And I can still recite it from memory.

      It’s this narrow focus on instant ‘communicability’ that’s to blame, plus the sentimental wash that has spread over the remnants (now fast disappearing!) of the ‘religious’ Christmas.

      Alan Griffiths.

      Reply
    2. Rita Ferrone Avatar
      Rita Ferrone

      @Michelle Francl-Donnay:
      Michelle, thank you for your comment and the link. I had forgotten all about that! Shows the risk that I am repeating myself. 🙁 It also makes me mourn again Cody’s untimely death. Perhaps he is praying for us to get this right.

      Reply
  3. Scott Pluff

    In a previous assignment, after enduring a seven-day novena and multiple Masses on Christmas Eve, I found hearing the Prologue of John’s Gospel to be a refreshing moment on Christmas Day. Partly a sign that I had reached the finish line, but more importantly a beautiful reflection on the meaning of it all.

    I do suggest to anyone choosing the Gospel reading for the Vigil Mass to skip the genealogy of MT 1:1-17. In this Year of Mercy, have mercy on your congregation and spare them this recitation.

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  4. Bill deHaas

    Thank you for posting the link to Fr. Cody’s homily – profound.

    Mr. Pluff – there are ways of doing the geneaology/matryrology that can be very impressive in gathering the folks into remembering – it can actually be performed as an extended *prologue*.

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    1. Scott Pluff

      @Bill deHaas:
      Perhaps I’ve not heard it done well. I have a good idea why it’s given in Matthew’s Gospel, and I have some idea why it is included in the lectionary pericope. It even makes sense considered alongside the lectionary readings for all four Christmas Masses. But given that most everyone but the priest and the organist will only hear one set of Christmas readings, not all four, it doesn’t seem like the best choice. It hardly seems right to leave out the shepherds, angels, and manger to instead recall Great Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat.

      Reply
  5. Rory Cooney

    It’s a fine article, Rita. I commented on Commonweal…no sense repeating all that here. 🙂

    Reply
    1. Rita Ferrone Avatar
      Rita Ferrone

      @Rory Cooney:
      Rory, I did appreciate your comment over at Commonweal. Thank you! Thanks especially for reminding me of that whole “pitched his tent” thing. Wonderful.

      Others: be sure to see Rory’s comment in the thread following my column there.

      Reply
  6. Karl Liam Saur

    Yes, Rita!!!

    A personal note: I prefer to attend the Mass of Christmas During The Day precisely to hear this magnificent Gospel proclaimed and preached. It’s bad enough when the Mass on Christmas Day itself is treated as a barely warmed-over leftover, but then to denude it of its particular splendor is all the more aggravating. (I grew up mostly attending the Mass at Dawn, just to clarify. I’ve *never* attended a Midnight Mass (except an Easter Vigil or four that ran well past that hour) – children were forbidden to attend it when I was growing up – and I don’t particularly feel a loss in that regard.)

    It should be noted that this text was the subject of a particularly lovely modern chestnut (1957) in English – by Egil Hovland, of Norway – who knew to keep the setting simple, as there’s no way for music to compete with this most splendid of texts:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD0Bz5RrNRc

    My particular favorite verse in this Gospel is 1:5: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

    This is not a message of glib joy. It’s a message of hope to the utterly bereft and despairing – not because there is no darkness – NO! – but that darkness does not have the final word. The light is a whisper – a splendid morning star in the dark of night to guide the ship of our lives when we can’t even see the horizon of the sea and sky. Christmas means grappling with that darkness, not eliding it at all.

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  7. Brendan Kelleher svd

    In the spirituality of the Society of the DIvine Word – Divine Word Missionaries, the Prologue of John’s Gospel has a special place. It is the Gospel for our Founder, St Arnold Janssen’s feast day, January 15th, and by tradition recited before profession. Our founder’s father used to proclaim it as a prayer, while holding a lighted candle, in times of family, community and national trouble and distress.
    To proclaim and preach on John’s Prologue on Christmas morning is an honour and a privilege. And spending time meditating on John’s Prologue is possibly the best way to prepare to welcome the one whose birth we celebrate on Christmas morn.
    But then as a spiritual son of St Arnold Janssen, what else would I write.

    Reply
  8. Jeff Rexhausen

    In our small parish (one Mass on Christmas Day), we usually use John, but this year we are using the readings from the Mass at Dawn for two reasons:
    1. In this year of Luke, we are using that gospel whenever possible.
    2. The second reading from Titus, is also part of the second reading for The Baptism of the Lord, bookending the Christmas season.

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  9. Jim Pauwels

    I’m sure it’s true that people want babies, moms, angels, et al. Some other reasons for avoiding the passage on Christmas:

    * It is challenging to proclaim well, and challenging to the preacher.

    * It is a poetic, mystical and theological reflection. Unfortunately, all three of those things – poetry, mystery and theology – too often lead to obscurity and abstraction.

    * The sweep of its ideas makes it difficult for the “average parishioner” to digest.

    * Many attendees at Christmas mass presumably aren’t average parishioners, if by “average” we mean, “crosses the threshold of the church more than once or twice a year”. Is this the right audience for this passage?

    * In the minds of the people, “Christmas” is thick with connotations that go beyond the liturgical and the strictly religious. For many folks, it is redolent of family and tradition – indeed, probably the most tradition-laden of all days of the year. People aren’t looking for new and challenging on Christmas day. They’re looking for the way things have been. They’re looking for their roots. Surely this is a prime reason that this religious holiday continues to speak with such a thunderous voice in today’s consumerist, secular culture?

    * Everyone – clergy, musicians, other ministers, and families in the pews – are exhausted (and possibly stressed) on Christmas day. When in that frame of mind, there is something really alluring to being able to lean on the familiar and concrete.

    Given all this, it’s not surprising that both assembly and ministers would prefer inns, mangers, babies, swaddling clothes, et al.

    Ironically, the lectionary’s very flexibility and menu of choices probably accounts for its being a neglected Christmas passage. If it were mandated for certain Christmas masses – say, Mass during the Day during Cycle B, which is the “John year” anyway – it would be proclaimed, preached and digested regularly, and it wouldn’t strike us as intimidating and off-putting.

    Reply
    1. Chuck Middendorf

      @Jim Pauwels:
      I like your comment of having John being the Gospel during Cycle B. I’ll plant that in the back of my head. We were actually thinking of using John 1 this year for all of the Masses, but as someone points out, in the Year of Mercy, Luke does seem appropriate.

      Don’t tell the Vatican, but we always combine the gospels from the Mass at Night and the Mass at Dawn. No one ever seems to mind the “long version”–as everyone seems to enjoy hearing the “whole story.”

      Reply
  10. John Henley

    The Church gives us three opportunities to be rejoice at Mass on Christmas Day, celebrating the birth of Christ.
    Unforunately, modern man seems most reluctant to ever attend more than once, and thus misses out on hearing the answers to all but one of three questions that are given in the three Gospel readings:
    At Midnight: How was He born?
    At Dawn: How did heaven (the angels) and Man (the shepherds) react to the news of His birth?
    In the Day: Why was He born?

    Arguably, the last question and answer are the most important: rather than drop John 1, if any should go it should be Luke. Or perhaps there should be two Gospel readings at all Masses on Christmas Day?

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  11. Padraig McCarthy

    Some of us old enough to remember it will know John 1 as the “Last Gospel” at every Mass every day of the year!
    Perhaps, at the Mass of Christmas Day, the parish Liturgy Committee might discuss the idea of reading Luke (Night and Dawn pieces) at the regular time, and finishing Mass with John 1 as a spur to reflection after Communion to have this in mind on the way home.
    The same could be done at the Christmas night and dawn celebrations, unless perhaps it might overburden the night Mass. Even so, it would make a magnificent finale. Would hearing Luke’s narrative and John’s prologue in the same celebration precipitate Christmas indigestion?

    Reply
    1. Rita Ferrone Avatar
      Rita Ferrone

      @Padraig McCarthy:
      Nice attempt at a both/and proposal, Padraig, but I wouldn’t do it, simply because John I is not all that self-interpreting. Listeners need to hear it not only proclaimed but handled, unpacked, interpreted, related to our present situation, in a word: preached as the good news that it is, rather than recited as a memento of something already owned. It actually needs to be preached mystagogically, and that’s a challenge for us. Our preachers are trained in theology and trained in exegesis. All well and good. But they’re not trained in mystagogy. Despite the urging of John Paul II on its importance, it’s neglected. That’s perhaps why homilies on John 1 tend toward the technical or the abstract. It’s use of the tools homilists know best and are trained to use.

      Reply
    2. Jay Edward

      @Padraig McCarthy:

      And some of us still attend the EF and hear this at every Mass! The last Gospel is also read at the Ordinariate Mass!

      Reply
  12. Conor Cook

    Is there any reason a homilist couldn’t preach on both Luke and John, explaining that after Mass, before the recessional, folks should listen got it, and then have the “Last Gospel” proclaimed after the “Thanks Be to God”, where rubrically it wouldn’t necessarily be violating anything? Something like that.

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  13. Karl Liam Saur

    Anyone in a community that where the Matthean geneology is proclaimed at the Vigil?

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    1. Fritz Bauerschmidt

      @Karl Liam Saur:
      You crack me up.

      Though Herbert McCabe did once give a brilliant homily on the Matthean genealogy.

      Reply
  14. Karl Liam Saur

    I’ve attended such vigils. My impression is that sticking with the prescribed readings for the Vigil is partly intended to discourage having the Vigil upstage Christmas proper, as the full musical splendor is also withheld.

    THAT is a pearl of a homily! I’d have been in seventh heaven had I been present for its delivery. While glib therapeutic Christmas homilies grate on me very badly, I’ve also witnessed the brimstone homily of a preacher who used Christmas (and Palm Sunday and Easter) as his opportunity to deliver 30 minute harangues on abortion and contraception and sexual immorality to CP&E Catholics. Grapple with the real messiness of human life, and God’s grappling with it; don’t elide that real messiness into something much less than it is, but don’t melodramatize it, either.

    Reply
    1. Fr. Ron Krisman

      @Karl Liam Saur:
      “Pearl of a homily” it may be, but can you actually imagine it being delivered at the 4:00 PM “family Mass” on Christmas eve? Think of the car ride home and the questions the kids would be asking their parents. They wouldn’t be about Hezekiah.

      Rita, your article was great. Teach us more about mystagogy.

      Reply
      1. Karl Liam Saur

        @Fr. Ron Krisman:
        Well, I would have appreciated that one as a teenager in the 1970s, and I am pretty sure my parents would have, as they already had a quarter century of seeing that family life involved all manner of unexpected and unimaginable mess and by that time appreciated priests who didn’t shrink from engaging it, especially on the big feasts where people prefer to gloss over it.

      2. Rita Ferrone Avatar
        Rita Ferrone

        @Fr. Ron Krisman:
        Thank you, Ron. I will take your invitation as a challenge for another post!

  15. Brian Duffy

    The Dominicans amongst others have preserved wonderful chants for the genealogies. The music makes these tedious lists of strange sounding names not only bearable but delightful.

    Reply
  16. John Wotherspoon

    Use John’s Gospel, yes, but on the Sunday after Christmas – as explained in this file:
    http://v2catholic.com/johnw/2011/2011-12-20advent.htm

    Reply
  17. Charles Kramer

    If you don’t use the John reading at Christmas, it is never heard during the liturgy at all. So we lose the “view from heaven” of what Christmas means. And as earlier posting point out, the reading goes from one read at every mass to one never read at all.

    Reply
  18. Matthew Hazell

    @Charles Kramer (#27): that’s not quite true – Jn. 1:1-18 is also read on the 7th day in the Christmas Octave (i.e. 31 Dec) and on the 2nd Sunday after Christmas.

    Of course, the readings (and propers) of the 2nd Sunday after Christmas are never used in many places these days, because of the transfer of Epiphany. Just another reason why Epiphany ought not to be transferred!

    Reply
  19. Fr. Ron Krisman

    Matthew Hazell : Of course, the readings (and propers) of the 2nd Sunday after Christmas are never used in many places these days, because of the transfer of Epiphany. Just another reason why Epiphany ought not to be transferred!

    The solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord has not been observed as a holy day of obligation in the USA since the time of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884), and it was not observed in some parts of the USA even before that. With the reforms of the Roman Calendar in 1969, millions of Catholics in the USA now observe this important solemnity on the Sunday after January 1. That’s a good enough reason why the Epiphany should not move back to January 6.

    Reply

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