A Christmas Meditation on Logos — The Word
Author: p. Arne Marco Kirsebom, Norway
Words. The Word is at the center of every communication. There is no dialogue without words. Through conversation, through our meeting with the Other, we find other human beings who fit us. Although there is also non-verbal communication, this is still a kind of language., such as facial expressions, body posture and all this adds up to human communication. It is part of what makes us us, what makes us human.
But John does not reflect over just any word or expression in the opening lines to his Gospel. He speaks of the Word, the Word of God, the Biblical YHWH. He introduces the prologue to his gospel with: «In the beginning was the Word.” This opening would have awoken a peculiar association to the first sentence of the 1st Book of Moses, in a reader of from the 1st century AD: «In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth.” It indicates the starting point of everything. But John is a clever stylist: he uses the past tense of the existential verb: The Word was! The Word existed before Creation, the Word is eternal.
The Word that was with God, that is God, that is the Word that All is created by. No Word is more powerful, more effective than the Word of God that could speak all Creation. We may view all of Creation as a communication from God, a dialogue by God. Creation can be understood as language at the highest level. And Creation sends us a message about something enormous, something we humans cannot fully comprehend. It is so overwhelming, so superhuman, that it shatters all human concepts. Whether we consider the universe itself or the tiniest subatomic particles, we only meet with a deepening mystery. The growing insights of natural sciences touch upon this mystery. Could that inspire any different reaction than a deep awe and admiration?
This is the Word that becomes human by God, a creature among other creatures. God bends into Creation from His heavenly spheres. He does not maintain His distance, but comes to us by stepping into our reality. The Word comes to us. This is the final Word from God. God gives his final answer to the world through the Incarnation.
Never again will God have to speak, because everything has been said in the Word made Flesh. Thus God not only fulfills all the Old Testament promises and prophecies. No. He supercedes it in such a way that those who had the opportunity to meet and listen to the Word, could not really understand and accept it, says John the Evangelist.
John the Evangelist presents us through his prologue with a deep theological meditation on the birth of the Son of God into our reality. John is capable of this, because he has, by his own description, rested his head on the chest of the Lord and listened to His heartbeat (during the Last Supper, when John was a young boy of ca. 15 years). This description indicates that John has gained a deep comprehension of who and what the Lord is, which is unsurpassed amongst the Disciples.
This Word, this Son of God, became a human being of flesh and blood and took His dwelling amongst us. Similar to us in everything, except in sin. He was without Sin, which is an existential difference between Him and human beings. Sin is the a-word or anti-word of Man, the word that is not open to God`s Word, which blocks Divine communication, which does not become an answer, which makes the person deaf and hard of heart. Sin has a destructive power, whether it manifests itself on a personal or a collective level.
But God does not want to leave things at Man`s anti-word. Therefore He sent in His Love, His own Son, to lead us out of Sin. By accepting the Word into us, we can become words ourselves. We receive the Word first in the sacrament of Baptism, when the Word takes residence in our flesh. This Word does its work in us and wants to change us. This is a process that begins in us and with us. Certainly we can commit sins even after Baptism. But through the Church we can also accept the sacrament of Forgiveness, which cleanses us and gives as a new start.
The more we open ourselves to living the reality of the Word in our lives, the more the Word will live through us, and the more can we become words ourselves, become an answer, a proselyte message, a testimony, a living communication. Yes, we will become more genuinely human, more humane. Jesus Christ is the whole and complete Man, the humane human. The more alike we become to Christ, the more we become humane humans, and the more we become ourselves. If we wish to find ourselves, we must seek Christ.
The Word was made Flesh. A flesh that is not tied to Time and Space, but which flows out to All through the death and resurrection f Christ and through the birth of the Church, and it reaches all places at all times through the Eucharist, in the Church. We accept the Word made Flesh through the Eucharist. It takes dwelling in us and wishes to change us to become more like Itself. It sends us out into the world to change the world. The Word could stop at us, but it wants to go out, to be shared, to move on.
Christmas is the feastday of the Logos — the Word of God, and it is a feast of Man. But not Man made by himself in Man`s image, rather Man created in God`s image. We regain the dignity we lost when Adam was cast out of Paradise, when chaos or anti-order entered the world, in Jesus Christ and only in Jesus Christ.
Let us accept the Word made Flesh, let us be nourished by Him, let us be changed by Him and let us go out to change our world. Let us be the words in the Kingdom of God, let us be words of Love, spreading light and warmth.
