The Word Became Flesh

From The Child and the Church by EM Standing and Others:

Pg 144

The other day I saw a painting and underneath was written “The Word Became Flesh.” Since I had been thinking about this mystery of learning a language, I took the phrase literally. This is what always happens with the education of children: “The word becomes flesh.”

So the child master this language in a way peculiar to childhood. He takes; he constructs; he makes himself grow to a man without effort or fatigue merely by living. It is the child who produces this creation.

So what the child “takes” does “become flesh” because language becomes incarnated in him. This is a matter of supreme importance: It is the Period of the Absorbent Mind.

~Maria Montessori (also in The Absorbent Mind, unedited versions)