The Human Revolution and Christogenesis

Dear Friends,

As we pause to give thanks for the gifts and blessings of our lives, let us recall the many times we have taken life for granted, remembering that each moment is a gift; each breadth is life itself.   What do we live for?  Who do we live for? These questions are crucial today, for we can no longer presume to know how the future will unfold.  We must learn to rewire our energy fields, trusting that God is in the chaos and that, in every disorder, new order is arising.

We are a people on the move; we have always been on the move, if we attend to the insights from evolution. We are human persons in the making. “The making of what,” you ask? The making of the fullness of personhood, which translates into the fullness of relational beings. We are made for the fullness of love and will not rest until we rest in love. We are on our way toward deep relationality, relationship with all life forms, from bats to birds and trees, sun, air, other humans, God and self.  However, we keep thinking we are autonomous human beings having a relational experience when, indeed, we are relational beings having a brief moment of autonomy.

From a religious perspective, movement is what God is all about. Next week, Christians will begin the season of Advent, anticipating the coming of the Lord: God is coming to us. We cannot go to God because we do not know where God lives, but God comes to us, to be with us and to love us unto the fullness of life. God is in movement us and we are in movement to God:  two poles of attraction longing to find one another in a complete union of love. As the early Church fathers realized, we do not simply move toward God; rather we are to become God, as God becomes us. It is the mystery of the Incarnation. We are caught up in a cosmotheandric reality, the interweaving of divine, created energies in cosmic life.

Almost eight centuries ago, the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure wrote that Christ shares existence with each and every-thing, with rocks and plants, and animals and angels; all are brought into the fullness of life in Christ. Today we realize it is the Spirit, the energy and breadth of God, who weaves reality into the emergence of Christ; the Spirit who breathes through us and draws us to trust, hope and endure unto the fullness of love. The Spirit is the energy of Christogenesis, the birthing of Christ in evolution.  As we reflect on the mystery of the incarnation this Advent, we are to realize that the whole cosmos is mothering God—and we are the birthgivers. If we could enter into the great movement we are in, we would not fear the development of artificial intelligence or the politics of our age; rather we would approach the world as the birthplace of a new reality, a reality woven in and through our lives.

This is the heart of our Center for Christogenesis: God is doing new things and we are doing new things as well. How we do what we do makes all the difference in the world. The Center for Christogenesis  envisions reframing the energies of religion for an earth community in formation. We seek to build on the divine potential within us to become new persons for a new world; and we aim to deepen an understanding of God as kenotic presence, hidden in the details of our lives, empowering us toward more life, toward the fullness of love.

Our Center has plans–we have vision, but we need your financial support to transform this vision into reality. I hope you will consider giving this December—no amount is too small or too large. Every contribution is an act of participation—not just a human act but a divine act of participation—for God is doing new things through the particularity of every single person—and that person is you.

Blessings and peace,

Sr. Ilia