Anniversary of Teilhard de Chardin’s Death
Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.
Teilhard de Chardin
Today we commemorate the anniversary of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s death.
He died April 10th, 1955, in New York City. It was Easter Sunday.
+
What Would Teilhard Say Today?
Excerpt from “The 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic: What Would Teilhard Say?”
by Ilia Delio
“Teilhard would view [the] pandemic as an opportunity to harness the energies of love in new ways. Every act of suffering in his view is an invitation to a new creative moment, a wake-up call that something old is breaking down and something new is taking place in our midst. Our global pandemic is marked by the reality that information is no longer local. Our lines of complexity have created a global world. Whatever takes place from now on will affect the entire world. In this respect, returning to “business as usual” shows a blind eye to the evolutionary moment we are in. Teilhard was aware that the energies of creativity bring with them a certain terror, a not-knowing what the outcome will be. Hence he advocated radical trust in the inner presence of God and the holiness of the world. In his “Mass on the World,” he wrote:
Whether we like it or not by power and by right you are incarnate in the world. . . My God, I prostrate myself before your presence in the universe which has now become living flame. . . It is a terrifying thing to have been born: I mean, to find oneself, without having willed it, swept irrevocably along on a torrent of fearful energy which seems as thought it wished to destroy everything it carries with it [Mass on the World, 29] …
The whole earth is a Eucharistic field of Christ’s body and blood. Teilhard wrote:
What I want, my God, is that by a reversal of forces which you alone can bring about, my terror in face of the nameless changes destined to renew my being may be turned into an overflowing joy at being transformed into you. I wonder anxiously where life is leading me. . . May this communion of bread with the Christ clothed in the powers which dilate the world, free me from my timidities and my heedlessness. In the whirlpool of conflicts and energies out of which must develop my power to apprehend and experience your presence, I throw myself, my God, on your word. [Mass on the World, 30]
In the face of terror, darkness and the unknown, Teilhard had consummate trust in the presence of God’s absolute love, a love that would not fail us because God is creating us in this moment, a creative tension that hovers between suffering, death and new life. Read more>
View print-friendly version
2 Comments
Related Posts
The Universe as Sacred Story: Bridging Science and Spirit
Teaching undergraduate students this semester has revealed their deepest concerns about technology’s growing influence on human identity. While they grapple with immediate challenges like social media addiction and its effects…
By history, save for a relatively few spiritually regenerated souls, separation consciousness has been the prevailing norm, and the cause of all divisiveness, polarization, war, inequality, and degradation of the biosphere. That has not significantly changed over time, not in ways that approximate stemming the tsunamic tide of same, to say nothing of overcoming its pathogenic gradient. Such is not a cynical statement, but an observation of fact. Seems its more accurate to say a “remnant” (Teilhard might say, generously, a “phylum”) of holistic seers and thinkers have prophetically sounded the alarm, but to little avail, as the status still remains quo among earth’s myopic power structures. The noosphere is a wading pool compared to the vast ocean of carnally-minded thinkers, by history and now. Truth be told, if all the microbes on earth disappeared today, the biosphere would summarily die. By contrast, if all of humanity disappeared today, the biosphere would not only recover, it would thrive. So I ask, which is the virulent pandemic here, mankind or toxic microbes? This Coronavirus and its proliferation are directly related to the earth’s desecration by its self-absorbed consumerist population, and as a living organism, the earth is biting back — famines, droughts, forest fires, rising oceans, climate change, pandemics, mass migrations, etc. Theologically, one can’t have it both ways. If between God and creation there’s no “between,” because the two are one, then it seems creation/God is intelligently faithful to its unbreakable laws of reaping and sowing — as in — the chickens are coming home to roost big time, and at all levels. Teilhardian optimism notwithstanding, such was forecast by Christ in the Gospels. Are his words (i.e. “pestilences”) not to be considered at such a time? Not as an omen of doom, but one of hope for the faithful.
Teilhard believed, as I understand him, in the marriage between Spirit and Matter, the within and without of Reality, two sides of one coin. I think he would see this pandemic as a manifestation of a troubling dis-ease that has gone “viral” within humanity today…. the “illusion of separation” from God,from our bodies, each other and nature. This is the separation that he tried so hard to overcome. The world is One, body, soul, Spirit. We no longer have the ability to see God in all things. We have separated ourselves from God, from each other, our bodies, and nature. This is being manifested by “climate change” within and without. The inner change within humanity of deepening distrust and hatred of the “other,” the severe polarization within is being manifested without in the extremes in the weather/climate. We are out of balance, lacking harmony. We are all children of the Great Divorce, that between Spirit and Matter. The only vaccine which will cure this dis-ease is to create a world in which the needs of all are met, for housing, healthcare, and education. Once we care equally for each other and for the earth and stop polluting and consuming we will see a decrease in this virus because this IS the virus.