The Meaning of History, the Universe, and Everything

According to the Pope. Excerpts:

If, meanwhile, we look at the world in faith, we know that there is another, second breakthrough point within it: the moment at which God became man, the moment at which was achieved, not just the breakthrough from nature to mind, but the breakthrough from Creator to creature. That is the moment when, in one place, the world and God became one. The significance of all the history that followed after can only be that of including the entire world within this union and, on that basis, giving it the fulfilled meaning of being at one with its Creator. "God became man, in order that men might become gods," is what Saint Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, said. We can say, as a matter of fact, that the actual meaning of history is being announced to us here. In the breakthrough from the world to God, everything that went before and everything that followed afterward is given its proper significance as the great movement of the cosmos is drawn into the process of deification, into a return to the state from which it originated.--Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), What It Means to Be a Christian, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), pg. 53