We cannot look directly at Christ any more than we can look directly at the sun. He has to be “interpreted”. His works, words, miracles are one and all signs that point to something: they do not signify only themselves. They possess an unbounded depth into which they attract and invite us. But we do not find the truth behind them, at a second, purely spiritual level (as the Fathers often thought: that was the eggshell of their Platonism). Rather (and the Fathers affirmed this as well): the Word became Flesh, the eternal Meaning has become incarnate within the temporal symbol. What is signified must be sought within the sign itself, the “moral” within the history, the God within the Man. No one shall ever leave Christ’s humanity behind as obsolete instrument.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (1953), chapter titled Christ