“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.“ Psalm 19:2
Read the following words as your prayer to Christ who extends into all the corners of your life and your world:
You the Centre at which all things meet and which stretches out over all things so as to draw them back into itself: I love you for the extensions of your body and soul to the farthest corners of creation through grace, through life, and through matter.
Lord Jesus, you who are as gentle as the human heart, as fiery as the forces of nature, as intimate as life itself, you in whom I can melt away and with whom I must have mastery and freedom: I love you as the world, as this world which has captivated my heart.
Hymn of the Universe, 7
How does this prayer speak to you as you begin this part of the retreat? Is Christ the center of your life? What can it mean to you to love the world as Teilhard did?
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in love with the world, was as fully alive as anyone could be. His life was one of passionate intellectual and spiritual adventure. His tremendous mind led him to continually ask profound questions about the meaning of cosmic and human life.
As traveler, explorer, scientist, priest, and mystic, he saw the world as a vast, living, tangible organism. As both theologian and scientist, he sought to reconcile the cosmic mysticism of St. Paul with the insights of evolution and contemporary cosmology.
His profound knowledge and his scientific imagination led him to see life and the universe in the widest possible perspective: the explosion of stars, the violent formation of great landmasses, and the tectonic shifts that resulted in mountains and canyons.
Born in the Auvergne region of Southern France, he traveled literally all over the world and spent his final years in the U.S. where he died suddenly in 1955. From childhood, he was fascinated with rocks and all earth forms. After a privileged childhood he entered the Jesuit order where he was encouraged to study early life forms or paleontology. As a paleontologist he found fascinating the origins of the human being.
Wherever he was, he collaborated with local scientists and paleontologists. He spent many years in China in exploration and research. He helped in the discovery of Peking man in 1931. His research led him to ask if Peking man was perhaps the earliest human being.
With the eyes of faith Teilhard discerned in the evolutionary process a guiding principle: that organisms evolved toward consciousness, love, and higher forms of spiritual energy. He sought to strengthen the bonds of the human community around the world through these powers of love and collaboration. He looked for new models of holiness and spirituality and looked for a mysticism of action.
Many people in his day thought Teilhard was too complex, too difficult a writer, too daring an innovator. Consequently, fifty years ago at the time of his death (1955) he was not given the attention he deserved. His contemporaries did not fully understand the power of his vision of God’s universe or appreciate his life-affirming spirituality.
Look back at the opening prayer and read it again, asking yourself if or how you have changed after reading about Teilhard.
Throughout his life Teilhard lived as a deeply faithful member of the Catholic Church and the Jesuit order. However, the powers in the Vatican opposed him and criticized his scientific writing while he was alive and has not yet officially recognized the treasure of his spiritual and scientific legacy. He lived in exile from his beloved France for most of his life because of the Vatican’s opposition to his theories, but that was a blessing in disguise because, as a result of his exile, he was able to do his research on several continents.
Today Teilhard de Chardin Societies have been established in many countries. His books are being continually read, studied, and republished. Many Christians and others revere him, and in the 50 years since his death people throughout the world have celebrated his life and ideas. He is indeed still fully alive today in his thoughts and insights.
That aliveness is first evident in one of his first books. The Divine Milieu had been in his mind ever since his experiences as a stretcher bearer in World War I. He finished the book in 1927, but it was never publicly recognized until its publication in French in 1957, two years after his death.
He chose the expression “the divine milieu” to describe the presence and influence of God throughout creation and all areas of human experience. He saw this presence of God as the power of love to be shared. The one central focus of divine energy is God. Teilhard’s language foreshadowed the scientific/philosophical study of the universe today.
Teilhard wrote The Divine Milieu “for those who love the world.” It is his spiritual masterpiece showing a mystical vision of communion and union with God which gives every human being access to a “divine milieu.” In his vision everything is transformed into fullness that culminates in Jesus Christ.
Early in his life Teilhard also wrote Hymn of the Universe (published in English in 1965). This can serve as an intimate companion to The Divine Milieu. In the first half of the book, “The Mass on the World,” Teilhard shows how Communion with Christ through all things was his particular vocation. As a dedicated priest, also passionately devoted to the science of the earth, its life, and that of human beings, he wanted to offer up the whole creation to God.
He first began this particular kind of offering when he lived in the trenches during World War I and later when he was on expedition in China and had no place or time to offer his daily Mass. Calling his reflection, “The Mass on the world,” he includes five parts: The Offering, Fire over the Earth, Fire in the Earth, Communion, and Prayer.
Take a few moments to look out your window (or go outside), and join your heart and prayer with nature immediately around you. Join prayerfully with Teilhard as you make your own offering of work and suffering:
Since once again, Lord…I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar, and on it will offer you all the labours and sufferings of the world…
I will place on my paten, O God, the harvest to be won by this renewal of labour. Into my chalice I shall pour alhe sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth’s fruits.
My paten and my chalice are the depths of a soul laid widely open to all the forces which in a moment will rise up from every corner of the earth and converge upon the Spirit. Grant me the remembrance and mystic presence of all those whom the light is now awakening to the new day
Hymn to the Universe, 19
The more intensely Teilhard came to know and experience the world, the closer God was to him. He realized that those who seek God encounter God by turning toward the things of the earth in love and reverence. For him the natural delight he took in life and all that exists was the beginning, and goal, of mysticism. His many friends saw how “aliveness” radiated from him.
Teilhard wrote many books in his life, most which were published in French and then gradually made available to English-speaking readers. A new book, Teilhard in the 21st Century: The Emerging Spirit of Earth (Orbis, 2003), lists in its bibliography 20 books and nine volumes of letters now available.
After this retreat of praying with Teilhard, you might want to spend time (a lifetime) in study of his phenomenal works. He was ahead of today’s cosmologists in saying that the Earth is unfolding or evolving to human consciousness and then to the consciousness of all creation, culminating in the Omega point–or the cosmic Christ.
Teilhard was an Easter Christian and died, appropriately enough, on Easter Sunday in 1955. Fifty years after his death he is celebrated throughout the world as a scientist, theologian, and mystic.
Conclude this part of your retreat by joining with Teilhard in a prayer he wrote early in his life:
Lord Jesus, who are as gentle as the human heart, as fiery as the forces of nature, as intimate as life itself, you in whom I can melt away and with whom I must have mastery and freedom: I love you as a world, as this world which has captivated my heart…
Cosmic Life, 1916, an early war essay