It is helpful here to recall the juxtaposition of Psalm 139 and the lamentations of Job from the previous homily. “…if God has descended and is now below, then the ‘below’ has also become an ‘above’, and the old division into ‘above’ and ‘below’ has been shattered ” (p. Human creativity begins only in response to this descent, and therefore every part of true creativity is a way of saying “thank you”. To receive the “descending God” is proper to what it means to be human. We do not make ourselves we receive before we create. And yet, not only is this not possible, it is also self-contradictory. What masquerades as nobility, courage, and even grit in the desire to do the truly necessary work of the world ourselves, on our own terms, as if beginning from a position of equality with the hope of securing equality for ever more, when considered more fully on the basis of what Ratzinger has already preached, is really a matter of pride. “We, however, prefer to thrust down the might on our own, without the descending God” (p.
Everything Ratzinger attempts to do in these homilies responds to the pattern initiated in Christ Jesus. The Incarnation is indeed preaching par excellence. The Word of God “came down” so we might “go up”. The Incarnation is itself the path by which we who are not God move towards union with God, going from what we are now to what we shall be in him.
“The bridge to the earthly figure of Jesus…” (2nd edition: p.
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