On this, the last day of the year, we read once again the magnificent prologue to John's gospel. It is read three times altogether during this Christmas season. It opens with the same words as the opening of the Creation story in the Book of Genesis: "In the beginning..." In the external God is the Word. The Word through whom God expresses his being and through whom he brings into being every created thing. Every genuine word is a self-communication; this Word is the ultimate in self-communication.

But it does not stop there because the Word not only brought our world into being but entered it and became part of it. "The Word was made flesh and lived among us."

The Word now communicates God to us in ways that we can understand, in language that is human. For those who can see, every human act of Jesus is infused with the divine. Through his humanity we have a stepping stone to God but, of course, the fullness of God's reality is still something that we will never fully grasp in this life. Even with the help of Jesus, we can only -in Paul's words - see "a dim reflection in a mirror" (1 Cor 13:12) or, in the words of the mystic, live in "the cloud of unknowing". But that is enough, more than enough for us to walk along the Way that is Jesus until that day when we are called to see our God face to face.