

The Center for Christogenesis is a spiritual organization that serves an axial role in our time, bridging faith, science, culture, and community.
The Center builds on the ideas of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
and seeks to actualize his vision of emerging wholeness for a new vitality of the spirit.
Our founder, Ilia Delio, OSF, offers an exploration of the divine as an awareness of God’s loving, dynamic presence.
This is a holistic vision–integrating spirituality, science, and contemplation–and open to all faith traditions.
We seek to extend this vision to all those looking for an innovative spiritual life and a renewed role of religion in the 21st century.
The Primacy of Love
Available Now for Pre-Order
In an age of anxiety where reason is deified, what is the role of love? This short book centralizes love as the core reality of all cosmic life. From the cosmological to the theological dimensions of existence, love is shown to be the irresistible force of attraction that leads straight into the heart of God. In a world of evolutionary convergence and global consciousness, love may be the singular ethic that binds us together, heals our wounds and draws us into a new unity of planetary life.

What Is Open Theism?
by Robert Nicastro | Apr 12, 2022 | Q&A
By way of brief overview, open theism is a contemporary mode of theological discourse that is more consonant with...

Looking at a Buttercup Through Easter Eyes
by Ilia Delio | Apr 18, 2022 | Ω Vision
One of the most remarkable people I have met along this journey of life is the late John Haughey, SJ. His keen...

The Risen Christ and the Power of Love
by Ilia Delio | Apr 10, 2022 | Ω Spirit
Image: Pysanky (Easter eggs), Kiev, Ukraine It is day 45 of the Russian War against Ukraine. This evening...

“When I Am Open” by Vonda Drees
by Christogenesis | Feb 11, 2022 | Visio Divina
+ When I am open, in rushes the whole lit point. I am free again Vonda Drees

Our Team Is Growing!
by Christogenesis | May 5, 2022 | News
Welcome Rebecca Mays and Kate Kristiansen to the C4C team! Rebecca is the new Christophany Groups...

Ilia Delio
“To participate in the world’s becoming we must have faith in one another and faith in the world.”

Charlotte Tomaino
“It is in our convergence and solidarity that we renew each other, the light expands and God, as Love, is visible.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“There is a communion with God, and a communion with the earth, and a communion with God through the earth.”

David Bohm
“As humans and societies we seem separate but in our roots we are part of an indivisible whole and share in the same cosmic process.”

Paul Smith
“We need a God that is big enough for our minds, close enough for our hearts, and us enough for our deepest identification.”

Ilia Delio
“We live to be born over and over again into higher realms of existence…”

Ilia Delio
“It is time to wake up—for something new is about to happen in our midst.”

David Bohm
“Deep down, the consciousness of humankind is one. This is a virtual certainty because even in the vacuum, matter is one; and if we don’t see this, it’s because we are blinding ourselves to it.”

Ilia Delio
“We have the capacity for more life but do we have the will?”

David Bohm
“As human beings and societies we seem separate, but in our roots we are part of an indivisible whole and share in the same cosmic process.”

Ilia Delio
“Realize that insight is the midwife of new life. Know yourself to be a thinker and thus a participant in the motherhood of God.”

Ilia Delio
“The whole history of the universe, and particularly the history of biological life on earth, has been characterized by the steady emergence of complexity.”

Albert Einstein
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Ilia Delio
“The foundation of things is not so much a ground of being sustaining its existence from beneath as it is a power of attraction toward what lies ahead.”

Ilia Delio
“Evolution is not a linear positive progression; rather, it is movement in tension marked by gains and losses in the development of more complex life forms.”

Teilhard de Chardin
“Only a God who is functionally and totally ‘Omega’ can satisfy us. Who will at last give evolution its own God?”

Teilhard de chardin
“No longer is it simply a religion of individual and of heaven, but a religion of mankind and of the earth—that is what we are looking for at this moment, as the oxygen without which we cannot breathe.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“What is happening under our eyes within the mass of peoples? What is the cause of this disorder in society, this uneasy agitation, these swelling waves, these whirling and mingling currents and these turbulent and formidable new impulses?”

Ilia Delio
“If the Church is founded on the Good News of Jesus Christ, how did it become so radically disconnected from the itinerant preacher from Nazareth?”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“Evolution is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must submit and satisfy from now on in order to be conceivable and true.”

Ilia Delio
“The same currents that run through our human blood also run through the swirling galaxies…one and the same evolutionary movement moves through all—a single self-transcending current of all-pervading energy that brings new life out of seeming catastrophe.”

John F. Haught
“The universe is a story still being told.”

Ilia Delio
“…the emergence of human life is contingent on more than evolution of the physical world alone; there is an inner pressure for spiritual transcendence.”

Cynthia Bourgeault
“We are in each another holographically, this world and us: the whole of the “universe story” carved in our own hearts, and the whole of our own story reverberating within the cosmic heart.”

Ilia Delio
“If we could discover this great mystery of God in us, we would be truly free, and out of this freedom the seeds of our lives would sprout into a new world of justice and peace.”

Ilia Delio
“Creation is not about a static world but a relationship between the dynamic being of God and a world in process of coming to be.”

Ilia Delio
“What we do matters to the “matter” of the universe, because by our choices we influence the life of the universe.”

Ilia Delio
“Nature is like a choreographed ballet or a symphony, whereby an organism is dynamically engaged in its own self-organization, pursuing its own ends amid an ever-shifting context of relationships.”

Ilia Delio
“Union is always toward more being so that evolution is directed toward the future fullness of life.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate each other.”

Ilia Delio
“In an evolutionary universe that is incomplete and open to the future, the principle of life is not support from above but from the future.”

Ilia Delio
“What would the world look like if all systems—religious, political, economic, social—followed the lines of evolution?”

Ilia Delio
“Evolution rests on the power of love because what ignites the core of being is ultimately unitive and transformative.”

Ilia Delio
“God is born from within when we come to know ourselves in the divine love that lives deep within us. There too we discover that we are not strangers in this evolving universe. We are its future.”

Ilia Delio
“Religion is not a feeling of inspiration or motivation; neither is it static love. Rather, religion is the call to wholeness, to union-in-love. Every world religion shares in this call in its own unique way.”

Ilia Delio
“Love is the whole, and every human person desires to belong to the whole. Religion that empowers the whole empowers evolution for the next level of cosmic life.”

Ilia Delio
“Without religious convergence, evolution cannot go forward because we cannot harness the energies of love fro greater unity and being.”

Ilia Delio
“Everything begins with consciousness and culminates in a luminosity of conscious matter unified in love.”

Ilia Delio
“To live from the inner depth of love, as persons in evolution, is to live with purpose and direction not as an “I” but as a “we,” a collective whole.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“There is nothing profane here below for those who know how to see.”

Ilia Delio
“To know God as the wholeness of love is to enter into oneness at the heart of all life.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“Our duty, as men and women is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.”

Ilia Delio
“Just when we think we have a certainty of God, divinity will slip out from under our evolutionary feet and, like the speed of light, elude our grasp to become for us the power of the future.”

Diarmuid O'Murchu
“Salvation becomes our primary responsibility through learning afresh what it means to be authentically human upon our Spirit-infused earth.”

Ilia Delio
“When we participate in the drive for new possibilities, we participate also in God.”

Ilia Delio
“The emergence of love in evolution is not merely a physical law of attraction for the propagation of the species; it is the longing for oneness, for belonging to another.”

Ilia Delio
“Living in freedom requires that we recognize the connectedness that is a basic reality of our existence. We are wholes within wholes; all we do affects all the other wholes of which we are part.”

Teilhard de Chardin
“Suffering holds hidden within it, in extreme intensity, the ascensional force of the world.”

Ilia Delio
“Evolution is not driven by more information but by more being and consciousness.”

Ilia Delio
“A world opened to the future does not negate the present; rather it makes the present rich in possibilities to create something new.”

Ilia Delio
“To co-create with God is to gather the many fields of the mind into a consciousness of love.”

Ilia Delio
“The present is eternity in the now. We are able to embrace this moment by emptying ourselves into it and surrendering to life’s energy flow… Every choice in the present creates the future.”

Ilia Delio
“The whole person is the creative person who explores and animates the universe out of an inner sense of freedom and participates in its evolution toward unity.”

Ilia Delio
“We have the power to create a new world, and we have the power to destroy this one. How we choose depends on how we grasp this moment as the kiss of God, impelling us to stand up and speak.”

Thomas Merton
“Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny.”

Ilia Delio
“The development of technology expresses the human’s self-development and self-expression through matter; it is integral to being the image of God and thus integral to authentic self realization.”

Ilia Delio
“Where there is love and forgiveness, there is hope for a new reality.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“What is happening under our eyes within the mass of peoples? What is the cause of this disorder in society, this uneasy agitation, these swelling waves, these whirling and mingling currents and these turbulent and formidable new impulses? ”

Ilia Delio
“When we participate in the drive for new possibilities, we participate also in God.”

Paul Smith
“We need a God that is big enough for our minds, close enough for our hearts, and us enough for our deepest identification.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“Today, something is happening to the whole structure of human consciousness. A fresh kind of life is starting.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“But what good would this great cosmic event be to us if we were to lose the zest for evolution?”

Louis M Savary
“Why can’t the energy produced in suffering, by our intention and choice, also help build the Body of Christ?”

Richard Rohr
“Matter has become a holy thing and the material world is the place where we can comfortably worship God just by walking on matter, by loving it, by respecting it.”

Heidi Russell
“The only antidote to the brokenness of the world is to surrender to Love, to let that Love act in us and through us, even when we know it may ultimately lead to heartbreak.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“I bless you matter…I acclaim you as the divine milieu, charged with creative power, as the ocean stirred by the Spirit, as the clay molded and infused with life by the incarnate Word.”

Ilia Delio
“We have enormous power to heal this wounded world through merciful love, loving hearts which welcome the stranger and accept the suffering of another as our own.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“An interpretation of the universe…remains unsatisfying unless it covers the interior as well as the exterior of things.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us.”

Ilia Delio
“We are to become new persons with new minds and hearts for a new world.”

Ilia Delio
“The same currents that run through our human blood also run through the swirling galaxies…one and the same evolutionary movement moves through all—a single self-transcending current of all-pervading energy that brings new life out of seeming catastrophe.”

Ilia Delio
“God wants to become something new in us but we must trust God sufficiently to engage this new birth.”

Ilia Delio
“There’s an inner energy to human love, and that inner energy is consciousness.”

Cynthia Bourgeault
“The gathering body of universal compassion is not about to let itself be dismantled!”

Ilia Delio
“If we can meet one another on that path of the inner spirit, the path of the inner mystic, the path of the cosmic heart, we will come to a new planetization, a new Oneness.”

Ilia Delio
“What are the new unions forming in our lives? What are the greater wholes we are moving into?”

Thomas E. Hosinski
“We can know God with our hearts as the mystery of Love, source of life and healing, dwelling with us and in us in love.”

John F Haught
“Cosmically speaking, love is the power that sustains everything but that also calls the universe toward a future of new and richer being.”

Ilia Delio
“Our God is an open God, a changing God, a novel God, a God who is becoming in and through cosmic life. This is the core meaning of incarnation; it is the story of Christmas.”

Teilhard de Chardin
“No work is more effective or brings greater peace than to gather together, in order to sooth it and offer it to God, the suffering of the world.”

Matthew Wright
“The work at hand is one work, and it will require all of us.”

Brie Stoner
“I want to learn how to be so radically present that I can feel my own being in concert with the symphony of the universe.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same act of complete knowledge.”

About Ilia Delio
Ilia Delio, OSF is a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC and American theologian specializing in the area of science and religion, with interests in evolution, physics and neuroscience and the import of these for theology.