This Sunday's Readings...

We're fortunate in Ireland that the Feast of the Epiphany is celebrated on the 6th of January, so we have the wonderful readings of the 2nd Sunday after Christmas tomorrow morning. A friend of mine from seminary suggested that the core of the Gospel would be preserved if, through some freak occurrence, the New Testament were lost except for the Letter of St Paul to the Galatians. I keep meaning to re-read Galatians with that hypothetical scenario in mind in order to make sense of what he was saying.
As I was reading the 2nd Reading and Gospel of this Sunday's liturgy, I realised that a somewhat similar claim could be made about those two readings. Between them they manage to encapsulate much of what is most central to our faith. If one were to commit them to memory, one would have the answers to the most pressing existential and philosophical questions.
The Second Reading ( Ephesians 1:3-6. 15-18) summarises God's plan for us quite nicely:

Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings of heaven in Christ. Before the world was made, he chose us, chose us in Christ, to be holy and spotless, and to live through love in his presence, determining that we should become his adopted sons, through Jesus Christ for his own kind purposes, to make us praise the glory of his grace, his free gift to us in the Beloved.

That will explain why I, having once heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus, and the love that you show towards all the saints, have never failed to remember you in my prayers and to thank God for you. May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him. May he enlighten the eyes of your mind so that you can see what hope his call holds for you, what rich glories he has promised the saints will inherit

The Gospel (John 1-1-18), on the other hand, is virtually a complete Credo and a summary of all that follows in John's Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word:
and the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things came to be,
not one thing had its being but through him.
All that came to be had life in him
and that life was the light of men,
a light that shines in the dark,
a light that darkness could not overpower

A man came, sent by God.
His name was John.
He came as a witness,
as a witness to speak for the light,
so that everyone might believe through him.
He was not the light,
only a witness to speak for the light.

The Word was the true light
that enlightens all men;
and he was coming into the world.
He was in the world
that had its being through him,
and the world did not know him.
He came to his own domain
and his own people did not accept him.
But to all who did accept him
he gave power to become children of God,
to all who believe in the name of him
who was born not out of human stock
or urge of the flesh
or will of man
but of God himself.
The Word was made flesh, he lived among us,
and we saw his glory,
the glory that is his
as the only Son of the Father,
full of grace and truth.
John appears as his witness. He proclaims:
'This is the one of whom I said:
He who comes after me ranks before me
because he existed before me'.

Indeed, from his fulness we have, all of us, received –
yes, grace in return for grace,
since, though the Law was given through Moses,
grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ.
No one has ever seen God;
it is the only Son, who is nearest to the Father's heart,
who has made him known.

Back in the day that (up to the words 'grace and truth') was recited by the priest at the end of Mass as the 'last Gospel'. There was a decided wisdom in repeating the richest of scriptural passages after each and every Mass.