31 December 2025
God Became One of Us
As the Church comes to the final day of the Christmas Octave, she places before us a truth so profound
that it takes more than a lifetime to absorb:
God became one of us
so that we might become like Him,
and so that we might become children of God.
This is not poetic language.
It is the heart of the Christian faith.
It was stated by the Church father Saint Athanasius in the 300s
and is taught in the Catechism of the Catholic Church #460.
It is our Catholic faith.
In the Gospel we hear today does not begin with a manger or angels or shepherds.
It begins before time itself:
“In the beginning was the Word.”
Those words should immediately echo the opening of Genesis for us.
John is telling us that what happened at Christmas is not a side story in human history.
These two stories are interconnected.
The Incarnation is the moment when creation itself is renewed from within.
The Word through whom all things were made does not remain distant.
He enters the world He created.
He takes flesh.
He shares our humanity
—not in appearance only,
but fully and truly.
God does not save us from afar.
He saves us by coming close.
And John is clear about why this matters:
“To those who did accept him, he gave power to become
children of God.”
That sentence should stop us in our tracks.
Christian faith is not merely about forgiveness,
though forgiveness is real.
It is not merely about moral improvement,
though conversion matters.
At its deepest level,
it’s about relationship.
Christianity proclaims a change of identity.
Because God became human,
human beings are invited into God’s own life.
The Church has always called this divinization
—not that we become gods by nature,
but that we are drawn into God’s life by grace.
God shares with us what belongs to Him
so that we might live as His sons and daughters.
We prayed earlier:
that Christ,
having taken our humanity to himself,
may grant us a share in his divinity.
That is not spiritual exaggeration.
It is true Christian belief.
But here is where Saint John’s letter brings this mystery down to earth.
If our identity has truly changed
—if we are children of God—
then how we live matters.
John speaks to a community living in confusing times. There are voices competing for our allegiance.
False versions of Christ.
Promises that sound spiritual
but are hollow versions of the truth.
So John reminds them:
You have been anointed.
You know the truth.
In other words:
remember who you are,
and whose you are.
This is always the danger after Christmas.
We celebrate something magnificent,
and then quietly return to living as if nothing has changed.
But John insists:
something has changed.
Light has entered the world.
Grace has been given.
We have been named children of God.
And children are meant to resemble their Father.
That is why John will not separate belief from life.
To claim intimacy with God
while walking in darkness
is to forget who we have become.
Identity precedes action
—but identity also demands expression.
This is especially fitting on December 31,
a day when many people take stock of time passing,
of what has been lost,
what remains unfinished,
what lies ahead.
The Church does not ask us today to resolve to become better people per se.
She asks something deeper:
Will you live this coming year as someone who knows who they are?
Not a spiritual orphan.
Not a self-made individual.
But a child
—beloved, claimed, and drawn into God’s own life.
The Word has become flesh.
Grace upon grace has been given.
The Light shines in the darkness.
As this year ends,
the Church does not urge us to look backward with regret
or forward with anxiety.
She invites us to live in the moment,
in the now,
standing firmly in the truth revealed at Christmas:
God became one of us—
so that we might live as children of God.
And nothing
—not time, not darkness, not the passing world—
can take that identity away.