The Two Words, Logos and Jesus (caution: nerds only)

The Two Words, Logos and Jesus

'In the beginning was the LOGOS and the LOGOS was with God and the LOGOS was God' (Jn1:1). John’s opening of his prologue repeats Logos three times. The number three is a sign of completeness and Logos in Greek means meaning or logic or word.

In Jesus, who is the Logos, the Word of God, we discover completeness of meaning, the full and complete revelation of God the Father.

The word 'logos' had an extensive impact on ancient Greek thought long before the Incarnation. The great philosophers and sages would refer to the logos when they wanted to show that there is an inherent pattern of intelligibility to be found within nature. They discovered that we humans have a built in capacity for that intelligibility, namely, our intellect. Furthermore, ancient philosophers showed us that every single word acts as a bridge between objective meaning and subjective understanding.

As Fr. Romano Guardini puts it, “...a word is the subtle body of a spirit. Two things meet and find expression in a word: the substance of the object that makes the impact, and that portion of our spirit that responds to that particular object. At least these two ought to go to the making of words, and did when the first man made them.”

When the Logos is pondered, and especially when it becomes activated in our thought process, we discover logic as a tool for reasoning. With this tool, we attain clarity of the logos of words (the meaning of words or vocabulary). We arrange words and ideas in a logical order so that we can make inferences more easily and our judgment more consistent. 

This arrangement presupposes that we are living in a chronological reality. In the human mind, logic requires time. Something comes first, then something happens next and then something follows.We humans, who are in time, which in part is set in a repetitious planetary cycle of  day and night, need to process meaning in the context of story.

Every story must have a plot, a sequence or series of events, a beginning, a middle and an end. In this plot we find conflict and resolution. In stories the logos reveals morality with the tension between good and evil. In the biblical Story in which every other story finds its meaning, good prevails over evil and brings about order out of chaos. The protagonist, Jesus, is Logos itself. In Him all of time, past, present and future collapse into one eternal now. This eternal now is the essence and source of goodness and truth. It is an Eternal Logos. In other words, the story is, in the end, CHRISTOLOGICAL.

Guardini reminds us that, “Words are names. Speech is the noble art of giving things the names that fit them. The thing as it is in its nature and the soul as it is in its nature were divinely intended to sound in unison” 

When the Logos is given a name, humans can speak it and by doing so activate its own infinite potency.To speak the name Jesus is to bring about the completeness of meaning into time.When we utter the name Jesus with sincerity of heart as a prayer two things come together and an explosion of love and light are showered on humanity. God and the loving act of God, salvation collide in the ‘Ye’ (Yahweh) and ‘Shua’ (saves) sounds of Yeshua. In the name Jesus the Logos or meaning of all meaning becomes activated. It is where we experience, subjectively, that God saves. So we add the word ‘us’. God saves us. God saves us out of a sheer act of self-sacrificial love. Thefore self-sacrificial love is at the heart of the meaning of meaning. It's all about love.

This is not just a sweet sentiment or wishful thinking. The love of God expressed through salvation is not some ethereal power that hovers over us as an abstraction. The Logos gets into the core of our being and saves us from within the complex web that we weave in our daily struggles, daily conflicts, daily drama we experience through the predicament our fallen human nature. The logistics of salvation is a detailed coordination of a complex operation involving matter, time, grace, and many people. The Logos pervades, grace barges in and we see, usually in hindsight that ‘in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose’ (Romans 8:28).  

We have the privilege over every other creature of the gift of speech and intellect for the express purpose of praying the name Jesus. There is great power in the spoken name of Jesus. Repeating His name prayerfully or speaking it aloud brings Him close and gives you guidance, strength, protection, clarity of purpose. It drives out fear, expands our heart to receive divine love, and grounds us to reality. 

The secret power in the lives of many saints has been the oft repeated prayer, ‘Jesus’. Take Saint Joan of Arc. She became a martyr when she was burned at the stake. As she lovingly gazed at a crucifix, the nineteen year old  remained stoic. Eventually the flames engulfed her, and she cried out her last words in the form of a prayer: “Jesus! Jesus!” 

In doing so, she acted logically and grounded her whole being in the Logos. The girl who heard voices and was thought to be mad, ended her vocation with an expression of complete sanity, complete logic and meaning. Wielding that prayer, 'Jesus' as a weapon of love, she exposed the madness of her murderers and the cruel illogic of evil.