The Meaning of the Incarnation

This is the meaning of the Incarnation.  God became tangible in order to teach us to find him in all that we touch and see and feel; for we are necessarily bound to the senses in this life.  Jesus did not do away with these external contacts; what he taught us is not to stop at them.  He taught us to find his Father in everything: in the flowers, in the lilies of the field, in the birds, in sorrow – in everything, because everything comes from his love, and must return to it.  "That while we acknowledge him as God seen by men, we may be drawn by him to the love of things unseen." 

We must endeavor, therefore, to cultivate this spiritual "second-sight."  It is the secret of the saints, for whom this world is not an obstacle between their souls and God, but a living image, a resplendent mirror of his goodness and beauty.  It is this great Reality, so utterly beyond our conception, that the Incarnation made possible: that by loving and imitating Jesus incarnate, we love and imitate God himself.  (Dom Augustin Guillerand, O. Cart.)