Fall Retreat Reflections: Breaking Into the Darkness

I was doing some reading the other day and came across a few quotes that correspond to our experience on Fall Retreat.  The first is from Von Balthasar:

"Man's alienation from God has so buried in oblivion so many of man's own deepest aspects [of being, that veneration of self, that true self-awareness] that these can be brought up again into the light of memory and human self-understanding only through God's Incarnation."

The push away from God, which has become more and more apparent in recent years, and into his own projects has shifted man and woman's view from one capable of looking up to see the heights of humanity and down to fathom its lows, to one focused in a purely horizontal fashion - that which lies in the pleasures and desires on earth.  Into this sort of doldrum existence we often find ourselves (it seems like its symptoms are boredom and self-centeredness) the Incarnation shines light and reveals to man and woman what they were really created for.

The second quote is from Fr. Giussani, an Italian priest who passed away several years ago:

"The Christian event...is something new, extraneous, which comes from outside and therefore is something unthinkable, that canned be supposed, that cannot be traced back to any reconstruction of our own, but that breaks in on life...This encounter opens my eyes to myself, spurs on an unveiling of me, shows that it corresponds to what I am: it makes me aware of what I am, of what I want, because it makes me understand that what it brings is just what I want, that it corresponds to what I am."