The phrase Homo Viator as the provides the clearest contrast (in a nutshell) between the medieval and modern world.  Homo Viator, Man on the Way, stands in contrast to the modern effort to render man at home in the world by overcoming nature, including human nature.  Sometimes, that's all to the good--I wouldn't want to do without indoor plumbing or the Bill of Rights--but the remaking of nature can be a destructive enterprise.  Destructive of nature and of human communities and persons.  For some critics of modernity, like the novelist Walker Percy, it's a matter of being at home with our homelessness.  In other words, restoring Homo Viator in a post-modern age.