From Above...

“Jesus did not come to add a new link to mankind’s already existing chain of cognition; he did not come to scale new peaks of existence higher than any previously glimpsed; nor did he come to establish a new ideal, a transvaluation for which the time was at last ripe. It is the other way around. From the abundance otherwise reserved for heaven, Jesus brings divine reality to earth. He is the stream of living water from the eternal source of the Father’s love to the thirsting world. From ‘above’ he establishes the new existence it was impossible to establish solely from below, existence which, seen only from the natural level, must seem subvertive and incoherent.

To participate in this new order, man must open his heart. He must free himself from the clutches of natural existence and advance to meet the things to come. He must eradicate the old, deeply rooted claim that this world is sufficient unto itself, the essential and only reality; he must admit that earthly existence even at its best is stained and discredited in the eyes of God....”
~Romano Guardini