Some words

From then-Cardinal Ratzinger on the Incarnation:

The Word became flesh. Alongside this Johannine truth there has to be put also the Marian truth as rendered by Luke. God has become flesh. This is not only an immmensely great and remote happening, it is something very close and human. God became a child who needed a mother. He became a child, someone born with tears on his cheeks, whose first utterance was a cry for help, whose first gesture consists in outstretched hands searching for protection. God became a child...

...God became a child, and every child is dependent. To be a child thus contains alrady the theme of the search for shelter, the elementary motif of Christmas. And how many variations has this motif seen in our history! In our days we experience this anew and in disturbing ways: the child knocks on the doors of our world. The child is knocking. This search for shelter is profound. There is indeed an atmosphere of hostility toward children, but is this not preceded by an attitude that altogether bars any child from entering this world because there would be no more room for him?

Full excerpt on Against the Grain.