Waching daily Sep 3 2017

Being a paleontologist and a mystic.

With an equally ardent love of the earth and of God.

Not an easy combination.

Especially in the first half of the 20th century,

a time when science and religion distrust each other thoroughly.

It happened to the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

In my pursuit of God,

I feel a great love for the earth and its tangible creation,

and it seems to me that these two passions must connect.

The latter must only be purified, rehabilitated.

Making a synthesis of religion and science becomes the life work of Teilhard de Chardin.

From a desire for a new and common mission for mankind.

During World War II he writes his best-known work: The Phenomenon of Man.

He is confined in Beijing at the time.

Every day he writes 2 pages.

A summary of 25 years of thought.

The main idea is that the spiritual life of man

does not happen outside of the earth's evolution.

Matter and consciousness are intertwined in an evolution

towards greater organization, personalization, transcendence and love.

With Christ as the starting and ending point.

A personal, transcendent God and an evolving Universe

no longer form two hostile centers of attraction.

They enter into hierarchic conjunction to raise the human mass on a single tide.

Such is the sublime transformation which we may foresee from the spiritual evolution of the Universe.

The most important books of Teilhard de Chardin appear in print after his death.

In the 1960s they become extremely popular.

But during his life, Teilhard de Chardin faces distrust

from the church hierarchy (of his congregation).

He is banned from publishing theological papers and is forced to leave Paris.

In a letter to the General of the Jesuits he writes:

I can truly say … that I now, more than ever before in my life,

feel indissolubly bound to the hierarchical Church

and to the Christ of the Gospel.

Never has Christ seemed to me more real, more personal or more immense.

How, then, can I believe that there is any evil in the road I am following?

He lives in China for several decades

in a kind of exile.

During several expeditions he contributes to a better understanding of human evolution.

He travels the winter desert at -32°C.

Since once again, Lord …

I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, …

I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar

and on it will offer you all the labors and sufferings of the world.

In China he also writes his main spiritual work The Divine Milieu.

With a telling dedication: For those who love the world.

Teilhard wants to demonstrate that the love for God and a healthy love for the world

can strengthen each other.

Everything can contribute to God's plan to unite everything in Christ.

All our life and work, secular or religious, can be sanctified.

God awaits us every instant in our action, in the work of the moment.

He is at the tip of my pen,

my spade, my brush, my needle —

of my heart and of my thought.

Resistance to Teilhard de Chardin's ideas has made him appear more modernistic than he really is.

He remains a Catholic, with a rather traditional belief,

loyal to prayer and faith, to the church, to his order and superiors.

But also loyal to his passion for matter he experienced from childhood.

Through fidelity and fidelity alone

can we return to God the kiss

he is for ever offering us across the world.