This is a reflection of a portion of a talk by Bishop Fulton Sheen I listened to at adoration.
For over a hundred years man has been on a search for a missing link, a being that could link man back to the animals of earth. In doing so this search does two things.
First- it diminishes mankind; for we are separate from the beasts with our ability to reason, a faculty which ironically enables the concept of the missing link in the first place. Without the God given gift of reason, we would be instinct driven just as the animals are.
Second- this search, were it ever to be successful, would be be an ego boost, establishing man with certainty as the "top animal". Since nothing has evolved higher than man, and we evolved up from an amoeba, we surely would be king of the proverbial hill.
But consider this. Rather than attempting to find a link back to an amoeba, there is a link establishing a line to a higher power. Why look down when we can look up?
2,000 years ago in a small cave in a small village in Israel, heaven came to earth, and the link from man to God was forever established in the birth of Jesus Christ. God desiring that his people should be free of sin, and thus join Him in heaven gave us the link that had been missing since the fall in the Garden.
Now, recognizing this link carries a realization that man is not "king of the hill", that there is something above us. Is it this shock to the ego that prevents so many from seeing the once missing link in Jesus Christ? I'm not sure what causes so many to try to find a link down, when the link up is right before us, and has been for over 2,000 years.