object:1.05 - Prayer
book class:Hymn of the Universe
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
class:chapter
Prayer
Lord Jesus, now that beneath those world forces
you have become truly and physically everything
for me, everything about me, everything within me,
I shall gather into a single prayer both my delight
in what I have and my thirst for what I lack; and
following the lead of your great servant I shall re-
peat those enflamed words in which, I firmly be-
lieve, the Christianity of tomorrow will find its
increasingly clear portrayal:
"Lord, lock me up in the deepest depths of your
heart; and then, holding me there, burn me, purify
me, set me on fire, sublimate me, till I become ut-
terly what you would have me be, through the
utter annihilation of my ego." *
Tu autem, Domine mi, include me in imis visceri-
*The term "ego" is used here (in contrast to the "true
self') to denote the proud, defiant self-reliance, the at-
tempted autonomy, of man in revolt against God. Only
through the death of the ego can the true self be liberated;
for man is truly himself only when he has replaced his ego-
centridty by theocentricity and thus found his true self by
looking for it in God, in whom alone we 'live and move
and have our being." (Tr. note.)
The Mass on the World 27
bus Cordis tui. Atque ibi me define, excoque, ex-
purga, accende, ignifac, subUmti? ad putissimum
Cordis tui gustum atque placitutii^ ad puram an-
nihitationem meant *
"Lord/* Yes, at last, through the twofold mystery
of this universal consecration and communion I
have found one to whom I can wholeheartedly give
this name. As long as I could see-or dared see-in
you, Lord Jesus, only the man who lived two thou-
sand years ago, the sublime moral teacher, the
Friend, the Brother, my love remained timid and
constrained. Friends, brothers, wise mens have we
not many of these around us, great souls, chosen
souls, and much closer to us? And then can man
ever give himself utterly to a nature which is
purely human? Always from the very first it was
the world, greater than all the elements which
make up the world, that I was in love with; and
never before was there anyone before whom I
could in honesty bow down. And so for a long time,
even though I believed, I strayed, not knowing
what it was I loved. But now, Master, today, when
through the manifestation of those superhuman
powers with which your resurrection endowed you
you shine forth from within all the forces of the
earth and so become visible to me, now I recognize
you as my Sovereign, and with delight I surrender
myself to you.
How strange, my God, are the processes your
* "And thou, my Lord, enfold me in the depths of thy Heart
And there keep me, refine, purge, kindle, set on fire, raise
aloft, according to the most pure desire of thy Heart, and
for my cleansing extinction."
28 Hymn of the Universe
Spirit initiates! When, two centuries ago, your
Church began tb^feel the particular power of your
heart, it might nave seemed that what was capti-
vating men's souls was the fact of their finding in
you an element even more determinate, more cir-
cumscribed, than your humanity as a whole. But
now on the contrary a swift reversal is making us
aware that your main purpose in this revealing to
us of your heart was to enable our love to escape
from the constrictions of the too narrow, too pre-
cise, too limited image of you which we had
fashioned for ourselves. What I discern in your
breast is simply a furnace of fire; and the more I fix
my gaze on its ardency the more it seems to me
that all around it the contours of your body melt
away and become enlarged beyond all measure, till
the only features I can distinguish in you are those
of the face of a world which has burst into flame.
Glorious Lord Christ: the divine influence se-
cretly diffused and active in the depths of matter,
and the dazzling center where all the innumerable
fibers of the manifold meet; power as implacable as
the world and as warm as life; you whose forehead
is of the whiteness of snow, whose eyes are of fire,
and whose feet are brighter than molten gold; you
whose hands imprison the stars; you who are the
first and the last, the living and the dead and the
risen again; you who gather into your exuberant
unity every beauty, every affinity, every energy,
every mode of existence; it is you to whom my
being cried out with a desire as vast as the uni-
verse, "In truth you are my Lord and my God."
"Lord, lock me up within you"s yes indeed I be-
The Mass on the World 29
lieve— and this belief is so strong mat it has be-
come one of the supports of my inner life — that an
"exterior darkness" which was wholly outside you
would be pure nothingness. Nothing, Lord Jesus,
can subsist outside of your flesh; so that even those
who have been cast out from your love are still, un-
happily for them, the beneficiaries of your presence
upholding them in existence. All of us, inescapably,
exist in you, the universal milieu in which and
through which all things live and have their being.
But precisely because we are not self-contained
ready-made entities which can be conceived
equally well as being near to you or remote from
you; precisely because in us the self-subsistent indi-
vidual who is united to you grows only insofar as
the union itself grows, that union whereby we are
given more and more completely to you: I beg you,
Lord, in the name of all that is most vital in my
being, to hearken to the desire of this thing that I
dare to call my soul even though I realize more and
more every day how much greater it is than myself,
and, to slake my thirst for life, draw me— through
the successive zones of your deepest substance—
into the secret recesses of your inmost heart
The deeper the level at which one encounters
you, Master, the more one realizes the universality
of your influence. This is the criterion by which I
can judge at each moment how far I have pro-
gressed within you. When all the things around me,
while preserving their own individual contours,
their own special savors, nevertheless appear to me
as animated by a single secret spirit and therefore
as diffused and intermingled within a single ele-
30 Hymn of the Universe
ment, infinitely close, infinitely remote; and when,
locked within the jealous intimacy of a divine sanc-
tuary, I yet feel myself to be wandering at large in
the empyrean of all created beings: then I shall
know that I am approaching that central point
where the heart of the world is caught in the de-
scending radiance of the heart of Go A
And then, Lord, at that point where all things are
set ablaze, do you act upon me through the united
flames of all those internal and external influences
which, were I less close to you, would be neutral or
ambivalent or hostile, but which when animated by
an Energy quae possit sibi omnia subjicere* be-
come, in the physical depths of your heart, the an-
gels of your triumphant activity. Through a marvel-
ous combination of your divine magnetism with
the charm and the inadequacy of creatures, with
their sweetness and their malice, the disap-
pointing weakness and their terrifying power,
do you fill my heart alternately with exaltation and
with distaste; teach it the true meaning of purity:
not a debilitating separation from all created real-
ity but an impulse carrying one through all forms
of created beauty; show it the true nature of char-
ity: not a sterile fear of doing wrong but a vigor-
ous determination that all of us together shall break
open the doors of life; and give it finally— give it.
above all — through an ever-increasing awareness
of your omnipresence, a blessed desire to go on
advancing, discovering, fashioning and experi-
* "Which is able to subdue all things unto itself."'
The Mass on the World 31
encing the world so as to penetrate even further
and further into yourself.
For me, my God, all joy and all achievement, the
very purpose of my being and all my love of life, all
depend on this one basic vision of the union be-
tween yourself and the universe. Let others, fulfill-
ing a function more august than mine, proclaim
your splendors as pure Spirit; as for m§, dominated
as I am by a vocation which springs from the in-
most fibers of my being, I have no desire, I have no
ability, to proclaim anything except the innumera-
ble prolongations of your incarnate Being in the
world of matter; I can preach only the mystery of
your flesh, you the Soul shining forth through all
that surrounds us.
. It is to your body in this its fullest extension—
that is, to the world become through your power ,
and my faith the glorious living crucible in which
everything melts away in order to be born anew; it
is to this that I dedicate myself with all the re-
sources which your creative magnetism has brought
forth in me: with the all too feeble resources of my
scientific knowledge, with my religious vows, with
my priesthood, and (most dear to me) with my
deepest human convictions. It is in this dedication,
Lord Jesus, I desire to live, in this I desire to die.
Ordos 1923
CHBIST
IN THE WORLD
OF MATTER
0h
THREE STORIES IN
THE STYLE OF BENSON*
My friend** is dead, he who drank of life every-
where as at a sacred spring. His heart burned
within him. His body lies hidden in the earth in
front of Verdun. Now therefore I can repeat some
of those words with which he initiated me one
evening into that intense vision which gave light
and peace to his life.
"You want to know," he said, "how the universe,
in all its power and multiplicity, came to assume
for me the lineaments of the face of Christ? This
came about gradually; and it is difficult to find
words in which to analyze life-renewing intuitions
such as these; still, I can tell you about some of the
experiences through which the light of this aware-
• Pere Teilhard sometimes called these stories histoires,
sometimes contes, written in the manner of Benson: a story
about mysticism by R. H. Benson had made a lasting impres-
sion on him. (Cf. Le Milieu Divin, Eng. trans, p. 124.)
(Ed. note.)
*° In these stories, too intimate in character for the author
not to feel the need to disguise his identity, the "friend" is
clearly himself. (Ed. note.)
36 Hymn of the Universe -
ness gradually entered into my soul as though at
the gradual, jerky raising of a curtain. . . "
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