The prologues and the coming of Christ

The four Gospels open the coming of Christ through four doors. John goes back to the eternal Word, before all creation. Matthew unfolds the royal line from Abraham. Luke takes the opposite path and goes back from Jesus to Adam, and to God. Mark enters straight into the preaching. Set end to end, these openings form a single movement, from the eternity of the Son to the child laid in a manger.

In the beginning was the Word

John opens his Gospel with the very words of Genesis. Before anything is created, the Word already is, turned toward God and God himself.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1

The Greek term rendered here as “Word”, logos (λόγος), means at once the word and the reason that orders it: the Son is the Word by which the Father utters all that he is, and by which all things were made. This Word enters his creation.

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” John 1:14

The Greek verb rendered as “dwelt”, eskēnōsen (ἐσκήνωσεν), means to pitch a tent. The glory that once rested on the Tent of the wilderness and on the Temple now dwells in a man’s flesh.

The book of origins

Matthew begins with a genealogy that sets Jesus within the history of Israel: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Matthew 1:1. He arranges the names in three sets of fourteen generations, from Abraham to David, from David to the exile, from the exile to Christ. The count makes it heard that all the waiting of Israel comes to its end here. Along this line of men appear four women, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and the wife of Uriah, whose history is marked by irregularity or strangeness: God lets his promise pass through paths that men would not have chosen. The list ends with Joseph, “the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” Matthew 1:16.

Back to Adam, back to God

Luke too gives a genealogy, but he places it after the baptism and traces it in the reverse direction, from Jesus toward the origin. It does not stop at Abraham: it runs through the whole human race up to “the son of Adam, the son of God” Luke 3:38. Where Matthew presents the Messiah of Israel, Luke presents the Saviour bound to the whole offspring of Adam, the new head of an entire humanity.

The beginning of the Gospel

Mark gives up any account of infancy and names at once what is opening: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Mark 1:1. The Greek word rendered as “Gospel”, euangelion (εὐαγγέλιον), means good news. Mark’s first word already gives the content of all that follows: what begins is the announcement of the Son of God.

The announcement to Zechariah

Luke has the birth of Christ preceded by that of his forerunner. The priest Zechariah is offering incense in the sanctuary when the angel Gabriel announces to him that Elizabeth, his barren and aged wife, will bear a son named John, who will go before the Lord “in the spirit and power of Elijah” Luke 1:17. Zechariah doubts this word and asks for a sign; he becomes mute until it is fulfilled. The silence imposed on the father is itself the sign.

The Annunciation to Mary

Six months later, Gabriel is sent to Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to Joseph. His greeting already says who she is: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” Luke 1:28. The Greek word rendered as “full of grace”, kecharitōmenē (κεχαριτωμένη), is a participle that marks a state already accomplished: Mary is, at the moment the angel speaks to her, fully established in grace. The angel announces a son who will be called Son of the Most High and will reign without end. To Mary’s question he answers that the Holy Spirit will overshadow her, for “nothing is impossible with God” Luke 1:37. She consents: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.” Luke 1:38. By this consent, the Word takes flesh.

The Visitation and the Magnificat

Mary goes in haste to Elizabeth. At her approach the child leaps in her cousin’s womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Spirit, proclaims her “blessed among women” and blessed for having believed Luke 1:42-45. Mary answers with the canticle that sings the work of God: he casts down the mighty, raises up the lowly, fills the hungry, and keeps the promise made to Abraham.

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” Luke 1:46-47

The dream of Joseph

Matthew tells the same coming from Joseph’s side. Seeing Mary with child, this just man resolves to send her away quietly, so as not to expose her. An angel stops him in a dream: the child is from the Holy Spirit.

“She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Matthew 1:21

The name Jesus, in Hebrew Yeshua (ישוע), means “the Lord saves”: the name states the mission. Matthew sees fulfilled here what Isaiah had announced, the child named Emmanuel, in Hebrew Immanou El (עִמָּנוּ אֵל), “God with us” (Isaiah 7:14). Joseph takes Mary into his home and gives the child his name.

The birth of John the Baptist

Elizabeth gives birth, and on the eighth day they want to name the child after his father. Elizabeth refuses: he shall be called John. Zechariah, questioned by signs, writes the same name, and at once his mouth is opened. The mute father recovers speech to bless God in the canticle that announces the visit of the Saviour and the mission of the child: “And you, little child, will be called prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways.” Luke 1:76.

The birth at Bethlehem

A census ordered by Caesar obliges Joseph to go up from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the city of David, from whom he is descended. It is there that Mary brings her son into the world.

“She gave birth to her firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” Luke 2:7

The name Bethlehem, in Hebrew Beth Lehem (בֵּית לֶחֶם), means “house of bread”. The one who will call himself the bread of life is laid at his birth where the animals are fed. The Word by whom all things were made enters the world claiming nothing of what belongs to a king.

The announcement to the shepherds

The first announcement of this birth goes not to the powerful but to shepherds keeping watch by night. The angel tells them the joy: “Today a Saviour is born to you, who is Christ the Lord.” Luke 2:11. Then a multitude of the heavenly host praises God: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men whom he loves.” Luke 2:14. God reveals himself first to the little ones, and gives them for a sign a child laid in a manger.

The presentation in the Temple

Forty days after the birth, Mary and Joseph go up to the Temple to offer the prescribed sacrifice, two turtledoves or two young pigeons, the offering of the poor (Leviticus 12:8). The old man Simeon, to whom it had been promised that he would see the Messiah, takes the child in his arms and blesses God: “My eyes have seen your salvation, a light to enlighten the nations and the glory of Israel your people.” Luke 2:30-32. He announces to Mary the contradiction that will surround her son, and the share she will take in it: “And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” Luke 2:35. The prophetess Anna, coming up, gives thanks and speaks of the child to all who were awaiting deliverance.

The adoration of the magi

Matthew reports the coming of magi from the East, led by a star, who seek in Jerusalem the king of the Jews who has just been born. Herod, troubled, learns from the priests that the Messiah is to be born at Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). The magi find the child and prostrate themselves: “They offered him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.” Matthew 2:11. The gold belongs to the king, the frankincense to God, the myrrh already announces his burial. The nations come to adore the one whom his own people will soon seek to destroy. Warned in a dream, the magi return by another way.

The flight into Egypt

Herod, outwitted by the magi, has the children of Bethlehem massacred. But an angel has already made Joseph flee into Egypt with the child and his mother. Matthew reads there the fulfilment of a word of Hosea: “Out of Egypt I called my son.” Hosea 11:1. Like Israel of old, Christ goes down into Egypt and comes back up; he retraces by himself the history of his people. At the death of Herod, the family returns and settles in Nazareth.

Jesus in the Temple at twelve

Of the hidden years at Nazareth, a single episode is reported. At twelve, having gone up to Jerusalem for the Passover, Jesus stays in the Temple without his parents’ knowledge, sitting among the teachers. Mary tells him their anguish, and he answers with his first reported words: “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s affairs?” Luke 2:49. From childhood he names God his Father. Then he goes back down with them and remains subject to them, “and Jesus grew in wisdom, in stature and in grace, before God and before men” Luke 2:52. Thirty years of silence at Nazareth precede the day when he will appear at the Jordan.