The Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
I admit it’s long confounded me: what exactly is meant by “the Word”? This beginning of today’s poetic gospel passage from John (1:1-18) about the preexistence of Jesus Christ and His relationship to God the Father, similar to other poetry, calls for some reflection and even a little scholarly interpretation. I understand from the later verse, “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” that it is referencing Jesus; but why, “the Word”?
As usual, biblical scholars shed some light on this question. Stay with me and I’ll break it down, hopefully in a way that makes it clearer. I learned that “the Word” (logos in Greek) is a term with meaning from a combination of sources: from Genesis, God’s dynamic creative word, from Proverbs, personified preexistent Wisdom as the instrument of God’s creative activity, and from Hellenistic philosophy, the ultimate intelligibility of reality.
In my opinion, that’s still a lot to take in, so using a little poetic license (I am not a bible scholar), I have broken it down further, using parts of each of those three meanings to describe the Word as God’s dynamic, creative, preexistent Wisdom and ultimate reality.
Replacing the word, “Word” with the above meaning, we could read, “God’s dynamic, creative, preexistent Wisdom and ultimate reality became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and” continuing as written, “we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” I think that’s pretty awesome.
This Seventh Day of Christmas, we continue to celebrate our God becoming flesh and dwelling among us. This is not God disguised as a human being; rather, God as one of us in the flesh, fully human, and yet fully divine. What a gift. What a mystery. What a miracle. Let us continue to adore The Word among us.
~Eileen Miller