He Allowed Himself To Be Broken So We Could Be Whole

Daily Reflection – 12/31/2025

Sacred Scripture

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; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. A man named John was sent from God. He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him. But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man’s decision but of God. And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only begotten Son, full of grace and truth. John testified to him and cried out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘The one who is coming after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.’ “From his fullness we have all received, grace in place of grace, because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only begotten Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.  (John 1:1-18)

Reflection

On the final day of a long, exhausting year, the Church gives us John’s prologue—the “Christmas Gospel.” It isn’t sentimental. It isn’t decorative. It is the blazing truth at the center of our faith: God became human so that humans could become divine.

John doesn’t start with shepherds or angels. He starts before time itself.
“In the beginning was the Word…”
Christ existed before creation, before breath, before light. And then, in a breathtaking act of humility, the eternal Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us. He didn’t visit. He stayed. He remains.

You’d think that would make us leap for joy every morning.
But the world is loud.
Sorrow is heavy.
And when life wears us down, we slip into thinking Christianity is a religion instead of the living partnership Jesus came to offer.

Jesus didn’t come to establish a system.
He came to share His life.
He came so that the life of God could take root in us.

Yet when God Himself walked into our darkness, we did not welcome Him.
And the signs of that rejection still echo today—anger, division, contempt, the endless polemic of hate. These are not just social problems. They are symptoms of humanity turning away from the One who came to heal us.

But that is not who we are meant to be.
That is not why God took on flesh.

Jesus entered every corner of our human experience:
born in poverty, raised in simplicity, misunderstood, rejected, beaten, crucified.
He came to a broken world and allowed Himself to be broken by it—
so that we could be made whole.

And here is the part we still struggle to internalize:
Human beings are meant to be the visible signs of God’s invisible presence.
If we believed that—really believed it—everything would change:
how we see ourselves, how we speak, how we forgive, how we love.

We carry wounds.
We doubt our worth.
We bend under guilt and listen to condemning voices that whisper we are not enough.

But Jesus shouts over those voices:
“You are worth everything to me.
I will make you good.
You do not need to die.
I came to do it for you.
Now live—really live.”

This is the Gospel.
This is the light that shines in the darkness.
This is the glory we have seen, “full of grace and truth.”

Prayer of The Day

Almighty God and Father of light,
your eternal Word leaped down from heaven
in the silent watches of the night.
Open our hearts to receive His life
and increase our vision with the rising of dawn,
that our lives may be filled with His glory and His peace.
Amen.

Daily Note

Jesus is not like some distant relative that you see every couple of years. He wants to take up residence in our life. He wants to be the “go-to” person of our life. He wants to be engaged and involved. But because Jesus became a man God came down here, living in our midst. We could never reach him up there, but in love he came down here to us. He became touchable, approachable, and reachable.