When John uses the formulation: “And the Word became flesh” (“flesh” refers to mortal man), he expresses the transition from the Old Covenant, made with a chosen nation, to the New Covenant, made with “all nations, tribes, peoples, and languages,” which includes and reaches out to every body and every person. We must take this formulation so seriously that we recognize that the whole of Jesus' humanity – his speaking and silence, rejoicing and weeping, anger, zeal, and exhaustion, even his weariness from having to dwell among people – is an expression of the internal divine mindset, which was described in the Old Covenant largely in an "anthropomorphic" manner. We must acknowledge that the Word of God truly takes on the form of a human being so that we can truly “see, hear, and touch it.” And we must finally be aware that what Jesus speaks, does, and represents is always a transmission of what it is meant to represent: “My teaching is not mine, but of the one who sent me.”
(Hans Urs von Balthasar /1905–1988/, excerpt from the text Priestly Spirituality)
