"So Jesus did not call Himself unequivocally the Messiah (Christ); the man who gave Him this name was Pilate, who for his part associated himself with the accusation of the Jews by yielding to this accusation and proclaiming Jesus on the cross, in an execution notice drawn up in all the international languages of the day, as the executed king (=Messiah, Christus) of the Jews.  This execution notice, the death sentence of history, became with paradoxical unity the 'confession of faith', the real starting-point and rooting-point of the Christian faith, which holds Jesus to be the Christ: as the crucified criminal this Jesus is the Christ, the king.  His crucifixion is His coronation; His coronation or kingship is His surrender of Himself to men, the identification of word, mission, and existence in the yielding up of this very existence.  His existence is thus His word.  He is word because He is love.  From the cross faith understands in increasing measure that this Jesus did not just do or say something; that in Him message and person are identical, that He always already is what He says.  John needed only to draw the final straightforward inference: if that is so -- and this is the christological basis of his gospel -- then this Jesus Christ is 'word'; but a person who not only has words but is his word and his word is the logos (the 'Word', meaning, mind) itself; that person has always existed and will always exist; He is the ground on which the world stands -- if we ever meet such a person, then he is the meaning which sustains us all and by which we are all sustained."  

-- Ratzinger's Intro., pp 151-2

I think this is the most difficult passage of the entire book, which is among the most profound books I have ever come across!  Jesus as Word=Jesus as Love=Jesus as Original Meaning of the entire created world=Jesus as the Eternal One!  It requires much mediation, reflections, prayers, and fasting to grasp the profundity of what the pope wrote here!