Yet, in our chosen rootlessness, we become more restless and more lonely. Our souls, despite what we tell ourselves, yearn for bone-deep commitment. We yearn to say "yes" to God and to others, and, in so doing, say "yes" to our truest selves. Only through our dedicated commitments can God finish with us the holy evolution of our lives into a capacity for deeper and deeper committed love. Only within the confines of chosen relationships, jobs, and vocations, can, paradoxically, our spirits soar freely to joyful fulfillment.
Pierre de Chardin, S.J. (1881-1955), priest, philosopher, and scientist, understood well that every human being evolves in faith, and that our evolution in faith dovetails with our evolution in our capacity for committed love. Our personal evolution - like the evolution of the earth, the solar system, and the universe, depends on our being patient with the slow, progressive work of God. He wrote,
“Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability--
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.”
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
"In his thinking and writing, Teilhard studied the intimate relationship between the evolutionary development of the material and the spiritual world, leading him to celebrate the sacredness of matter infused with the Divine Presence." (from Ignatianspirituality.com.) Eventually he saw the evolutionary process as having a four-fold sequence: the galactic evolution, earth evolution, life evolution, and consciousness evolution. He looked anew at the writings of St. Paul especially, and began to describe the Body of the Risen Christ as the Cosmic Christ, having a physical as well as a spiritual reality, and containing the whole universe. In Christ, everything was created, lives, moves, and has its being. Christ has a cosmic body that extends throughout the universe.
In "The Divine Milieu" Explained," by Lou Savary, we get a "Teilhard for Beginners" explanation:
"For Teilhard, Christ today is not just Jesus of Nazareth risen from the dead, but rather a huge, continually evolving Being as big as the universe. In this colossal, almost unimaginable Being each of us lives and develops in consciousness, like living cells in a huge organism. At various times, theologians have described this great Being as the Total Christ, the Cosmic Christ, the Whole Christ, the Universal Christ or the Mystical Body of Christ.
"With the help of all the human sciences as well as the scriptures, Teilhard shows how we—the cells and members of the Body of Christ—can participate in and nurture the life of the Total Christ. He also shows, thanks to the continuing discoveries of science, how we can begin to glimpse where that great Being is headed and how we can help promote its fulfillment.
"Teilhard’s spirituality identifies many ways we can help accomplish the Total Christ’s divine destiny. It is Christ’s divine task as well as ours to turn this fragmented world, through love of it in all of its visible and invisible dimensions, into one immense shining Being, the Body of Christ, glowing with divine energy. Christ the Lord, the head of this Body, has promised to be with us and guide us, from start to finish. He said, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20)
"At present, many of the cells of this Christ Body are unaware of their divine calling, unaware of how special they are in the eyes of God, and unconscious of the fact that they are already living their lives as part of this Cosmic Body. For Teilhard, this Cosmic Body is meant to become fully conscious of itself in every cell of its being in such a way that every cell is also conscious of the whole Body’s magnificent destiny. When this Christ Body realizes itself as the divine reality it has always been meant to be, that moment will be what Teilhard calls the Omega Point. (See Rev 1:8)
"It sounds like very heady stuff. That’s because it is."
Yet this poetic mystic was totally immersed in his own commitments, one of which was his commitment to his country and the world during World War 1. He chose not to serve as a chaplain, but served with the men in the ranks as a stretcher bearer during some of the most brutal, major conflicts during the war, including Champaign, Verdun, and the second Battle of the Marne. He was indifferent to his own safety. The Muslim soldiers called him "Sidi Marabout," "man of God." He won several commendations for his bravery, including the Croix De Guerre and the Chevalier de la Legion D'Honneur.
His faith was shaken by the violence that he witnessed. "But his insight into the evolving flow of history helped him to see, even in the midst of human tragedy, a sense of communion with the world and communion with God united in the crucifixion of Christ." (IgnatianSpirituality.com.)
"During one celebration of the Mass during the Battle of Verdun, he saw a vision of the entire world, vibrant, emanating from the Sacred Heart. He looked into the gentle but noble eyes of Christ and saw in them the fiery abyss of fascinating life. He later saw the same in the eyes of a dying soldier. He was changed forever and he knew his mission was to show everyone that God is at the heart of everything.
"'In very truth," he wrote, "it is God, and God alone, whose Spirit stirs up the whole mass of the universe in ferment....The fact is that Creation has never stopped. The creative act is one continual gesture, drawn out over the totality of time. It is still going on." The world is filled with the Absolute; to see this is to make you free." (from "Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Cosmic Christ," by Alex Terego)
Later, after receiving a Doctorate in Geology from the Sorbonne, he traveled with a group of scientists to China, where he participated in the dig that discovered Peking Man. During the trip the men endured blazing heat, icy blizzards, snakes, flash floods, marauding bandits, and civil war.
Meanwhile Rome was refusing to grant him permission to get some of his books published, banned his books that were published, and his order refused to allow him to teach on philosophical subjects in France. He was ordered to Rome to explain his beliefs, but still his revolutionary ideas were not accepted.
His works, he was told, abounded in ambiguities and serious errors.
Teilhard eventually settled at St. Ignatius Parish in New York City. His last letters to friends were remarkably free from bitterness and filled with his same enthusiastic focus on scientific ideas. He died peacefully in New York City on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955.
In 1957, two years after his death, the Supreme Authority of the Holy Office in a decree dated November 15, 1957, forbade the works of Teilhard de Chardin to be retained in libraries, including those of religious institutes. His books were not to be sold in Catholic bookshops and were not to be translated into other languages.
But shortly after 1962, several prominent clerics mounted a strong theological defense of his works, including noted theologian - and later Cardinal - Henri de Lubac, who wrote three books on Teilhard's theology. Later that decade, Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI, spoke glowingly of Teilhard's Christology. St. Pope John Paul II also appreciated him. In July, 2009, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi, said, "By now, no one would dream of saying that Teilhard is an...author who should not be studied."
The humble, persistent Jesuit who insisted on the reality of both material and spiritual evolution precipitated a spiritual evolution in his own Church. Because of him, the Church developed an evolved and evolving understanding of Creation, God, and the Cosmic Christ Who will bring all things, including the Universe, into One in Himself. And Teilhard accomplished this through an unswerving commitment, in love, to his order, to science, to theology, and to his Church. He truly understood how to say "Yes," to not go back on his word. What God started in Teilhard's life He was able to finish - after his death. Like Teilhard, the reverberations of our own lives will continue long after we have died. May they be reverberations of committed faith and committed love!
“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin