VII.
As you hear these words once again, what all do you hear about “the Word”?

VIII.
John 1:1-14 (New Revised Standard Version)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

IX.
In the Hebrew Scriptures we hear again and again, “… and the Word of God came to …” the prophet.

Do you think that was something the Gospel writer hoped his hearers would recall?

I have read that to the Greek mind, logos (which is the Greek word translated for us as “word” here) represented something like the organizing principle or reason inherent in the universe.

Could the Gospel writer have been “aiming” at both a Hebrew and a Greek audience?

Or what of the passage from Proverbs which speaks of “Wisdom” as present at creation and an agent in creation (Proverbs 8) –

“The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth…. then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.” (Proverbs 8:22-23, 30-31)

And then – “…the Word became flesh and lived among us …”

What do you hear in these words from the prologue to the Gospel of John?

charles
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}