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object:3.03 - The Consummation of Mysticism
book class:Let Me Explain
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter



3. The Consummation of Mysticism
The Milieu Divin and The Mass on the World

I. WHAT IS THE DIVINE MILIEU?



a. An ambience

Action and acceptance: these two halves of our life - this
inhaling and exhaling of our nature - are transfigured and
clarified for us in the rays of creative union. Whatever we
do, it is to Christ we do it. Whatever is done to us, it is
Christ who does it. Christian piety has always drawn
strength from these words of universal and constant union;
but has it, I wonder, always been able, or been bold enough,
to give to that union the forceful realism that, since St Paul
first wrote these words, we have been entitled to expect?

Once we make up our minds to take the words of Revela-
tion literally - and to do so is the ideal of all true religion -
then the whole mass of the Universe is gradually bathed in
light. And just as science shows us, at the lower limits of
matter, an ethereal fluid in which everything is immersed
and from which everything emerges, so at the upper limits
of Spirit a mystical ambience appears in which everything
floats and everything converges.

And in this rich and living ambience, the attributes, seem-
ingly the most contradictory, of attachment and detachment,
of action and contemplation, of the one and the multiple, of

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Let Me Explain

spirit and matter, are reconciled without difficulty in con-
formity with the designs of creative union: everything be-
comes one by becoming self (S.C., pp. 73-4.)

Incomparably near and perceptible - for it presses in upon
us through all the forces of the Universe - it nevertheless
eludes our grasp so constantly that we can never seize it here
below except by raising ourselves, uplifted on its waves, to
the extreme limit of our effort: present in, and drawing at the
inaccessible depth of each creature, it withdraws always
further, bearing us along with it towards the common centre
of all consummation.

Through it, the touch of matter is a purification, and chas-
tity flowers as the transfiguration of love.

In it, development culminates in renunciation; attachment
to things at the same time separates us from everything in
them that is subject to decay. Death becomes a resurrection.
(M.D., pp. 100-1.)

b. A centre of convergence

For all its vastness, the divine Milieu is in reality a Centre.
It therefore has the properties of a centre, and above all the
absolute and final power to unite (and consequently to com-
plete) all beings in its embrace.

In the divine Milieu all the elements of the Universe touch
each other by that which is most inward and ultimate in them.
There they concentrate, litde by little, all that is purest and
most attractive in them without loss and without danger of
subsequent corruption. There they shed, in their meeting,
the mutual externality and the incoherences which form the
basic pain of human relationships. Let those seek refuge there
who are saddened by the separations, the meanness and the

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Morality and Mysticism

wastefulness of the world. In the external spheres of the
world, man is always torn by the separations which set
distance between bodies, which set the impossibility of
mutual understanding between souls, which set death be-
tween lives. Moreover, at every minute he must lament that
he cannot pursue and embrace everything within the com-
pass of a few years. Finally, and not without reason, he is
incessantly distressed by the crazy indifference and the heart-
breaking dullness of a natural environment in which the
greater part of individual endeavour seems wasted or lost,
where the blow and the cry seem stifled on the spot, without
awakening any echo. ...

Let us establish ourselves in the divine Milieu. There we
shall find ourselves where souls attain the fullness of their
intimate essence. There we shall discover, where all beauties
flow together, the ultra-vital, the ultra-sensitive, the ultra-
active point of the Universe. And at the same time, we shall
feel the plenitude of our powers of action and adoration
effortlessly ordered within our deepest selves. (M.D., pp.
102--3.)

If any words could express that permanent and lucid in-
toxication better than others, perhaps they would be 'pas-
sionate indifference'.

To have access to the divine Milieu is to have found the ohe
thing needful: him who burns by setting fire to everything
that we would love badly or not enough; him who calms by
eclipsing with his blaze everything that has been snatched
from our love or has never been given to it. To reach those
priceless layers is to experience, with equal truth, that one
has need of everything, and that one has need of nothing.
Everything is needed, because the world will never be large
enough to provide our zest for action with the means of

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Let Me Explain

grasping God, our thirst for acceptance with the possibility
of being invaded by him. And yet nothing is needed: for,
since the only reality that can satisfy us lies beyond the trans-
parencies in which it is mirrored, the disappearance of all
the corruptible that lies between that reality and ourselves
can only have the effect of giving it back to us in a purer
form. Everything means both everything and nothing to me;
everything is God to me, and everything is dust to me; that
is what man can say with equal truth, according to the direc-
tion in which the divine ray falls. (M.D., pp. 108-9 •)



c. A person

The divine Milieu henceforward assumes for us the savour
and the specific features which we desire. In it we recognize
an omni-presence which acts upon us by assimilating us to
itself, in unitate corporis Christi - in the unity of the body of
Christ. As a consequence of the Incarnation, the divine
immensity has transformed itself for us into the omni-pres-
ence of Christijication. All the good that I can do - opus et
operatio - is physically gathered, by something of itself, into
the reality of the consummated Christ. Everything I en-
dure, with faith and love, by way of diminishment or death,
makes me a little more closely an integral part of his mystical
body. Quite specifically it is Christ whom we make or whom we
undergo in all things. (M.D., p. 112.)

Sometimes, when 1 have scrutinized the world very closely
I have thought that I could see it enveloped in an atmosphere
- still very tenuous but already individualized - of mutual
good will and of truths accepted in common and retained as
a permanent heritage. I have seen a shadow floating, as

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Morality and Mysticism

though it were the wraith of a universal soul seeking to be
born. . .. .

What name can we give to this mysterious Entity, who is
in some small way our own handiwork, with whom, emi-
nently, we can enter into communion; who is some part of
ourselves, yet who masters us, has need of us in order to
exist, and at the same time dominates us with the full force
of his Absolute being?

I can feel it: he has a name and a face, but he alone can
reveal his face and pronounce his name:

Jesus!

Together with all the beings around me I felt that I was
caught up in a higher movement that was stirring together
all the elements of the Universe and grouping them in a
new order. When it was given to me to see where the
dazzling trail of particular beauties and partial harmonies was
leading, I recognized that it was all coming to centre on a
single pointy on a Person: your Person

Jesus! (W.T.W., pp. 145-6.)

Tear away, O Jesus, the clouds with your lightning!
Show yourself to us as the Mighty, the Radiant, the Risen!
Come to us as the Pantocrator who reigned alone in the
cupolas of the ancient basilicas. Nothing less than this
Parousia is needed to counterbalance and dominate in our
hearts the glory of the world that is coming into view. And
so that we may triumph over the world with you, come to
us clothed in the glory of the world. (M.D., p. 118.)



133



II. HOW CAN WE BECOME AT HOME IN THE
DIVINE MILIEU?

a. Prayer to the Holy Spirit

The perception of the divine omnipresence is essentially a
seeing, a taste, that is to say a sort of intuition bearing upon
certain higher qualities in things. It cannot, therefore, be
attained by any process of reasoning or any human artifice.
It is a gift, like life itself, of which it is undoubtedly the
supreme experiential perfection ... to experience the
attraction of God, to be sensible of the beauty, the consis-
tence and the final unity of being, is the highest and at the
same time the most complete of our 'passivities of growth'.
God tends, by the logic of his creative effort, to make him-
self sought and perceived by us: 'Posuit homines . . . si forte
attrectent eurn - he made men . . . that they might grope their
way towards him.

His prevenient grace is therefore always on the alert to
excite our first look and our first prayer. But in the end the
initiative, the awakening, always comes from him, and
whatever the further developments of our mystical facul-
ties, no progress is achieved in this domain except as the
new response to a new gift. 'Nemo venit ad me, nisi Pater
traxerit eurn - no man can come to me unless the Father
draws him.

We are thus led to posit intense and continual prayer at
the origin of our invasion by the divine Milieu, the prayer
which begs for the fundamental gift: 'Domine,fac ut videam
- Lord, grant that I may see. Lord, we know and feel that
you are everywhere around us, but it seems that there is a
veil before our eyes. 'Ittumina vultum tuum super nos - let

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Morality and Mysticism

the light of your countenance shine upon us in its universal-
ity. 'Sit splendor Domini nostri super nos - may your deep
brilliance light up the innermost parts of the massive ob-
scurities in which we move. And to that end, send us your
Spirit, 'Spiritus principalis/ whose flaming action alone can
operate the birth and completion of the great metamorpho-
sis that sums up all inward perfection and towards which
your creation yearns: 'Emitte Spiritum tuum, et creabuntur, et
renovabis faciem terrae' - send forth thy Spirit and they shall
be created: and thou shalt renew the face of the Earth. (M.D.,
pp. 122-3.)

b. Purity: Faith: Fidelity

It could be said that three virtues contribute with particular
effectiveness towards the limitless concentration of the
divine in our lives - purity, faith, and fidelity. Under the
converging action of these three rays, the world melts and
folds.

Like a raging fire that is fed by what should normally ex-
tinguish it, or like a mighty torrent that is swelled by the
very obstacles placed to stem it, so the tension engendered
by the encounter between man and God dissolves, bears
along and volatilizes created things, and makes them all,
equally, serve the cause of union.

Joys, advances, sufferings, setbacks, mistakes, works,
prayers, beauties, the powers of heaven, earth and hell -
everything bows down under the touch of the heavenly
waves; and everything yields up the portion of positive
energy contained within its nature in order to contribute to
the richness of the divine Milieu.

Like the jet of flame that effortlessly pierces the hardest

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Let Me Explain

metal, so the spirit drawn to God penetrates through the
world and makes its way enveloped in the luminous va-
pours of what it sublimates with him.

It does not destroy things or distort them; but it liberates
things, directs them, transfigures them, animates them. It does
not leave things behind but, as it rises, it leans on them for
support; and carries along with it the chosen part of things.

Purity, faith and fidelity, static virtues and operative vir-
tues, you are truly, in your serenity, nature's noblest ener-
gies - those which give even the material world its final
consistency and ultimate shape. You are the formative
principles of the New Earth. Through you, threefold aspect
of one and the same trusting adoration, 'we overcome the
world'. 'Haec est quae vincit Mundum, fides nostra - It is this
that overcomes the world, our faith. (M.D., pp. 132-3.)

Fold your wings, my soul, those wings you had spread
wide to soar to the terrestrial peaks where the light is most
ardent. It is for you simply to await the descent of the Fire -
supposing it to be willing to take possession of you.

If you are to attract its power to yourself, you must first
loosen the bonds of affection which still tie you to objects
cherished too exclusively for their own sake. The true
union that you ought to seek with creatures that attract you
is to be found not by going directly to them but by con-
verging with them on God, sought in and through them.
It is not by making themselves more material, relying solely
on physical contacts, but by making themselves more spiri-
tual in the embrace of God, that things draw closer to each
other and, following their invincible natural bent, end by
becoming, all of them together, one. '. Therefore, my soul,
be chaste.

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Morality and Mysticism

And when you have thus relieved your being of its burden
of crude accretions, you must loosen yet further the fibres
of your substance. In your excessive self-love you are like a
molecule closed in upon itself and incapable of entering
easily into any new combination. God looks to you to be
more open and more pliant. If you are to enter into him you
need to be freer and more tiger. Have done, then, with your
egoism and your fear of suifering. Love others as you love
yourself, that is to say admit them into yourself, all of them,
even those whom, if you were a pagan you would exclude.
Accept pain. Take up your cross, my soul. (W.T.W., pp.
143-4.)

III. THE TOTAL DIVINE MILIEU: THE COMMUNION
OF SAINTS

The divine Milieu which will ultimately be one in the Pier-
oma, must begin to become one during the earthly phase of
our existence. So that although the Christian who hungers
to live in God may have attained all possible purity of desire,
faith in prayer, and fidelity in action, the divinization of his
universe is still open to vast possibilities. It would still re-
main for him to link his elementary work to that of all the
labourers who surround him. The innumerable partial
worlds which envelop the diverse human monads press in
upon him from all around. His task is to re-kindle his own
ardour by contact with the ardour of all these foci, to make
his own sap communicate with that circulating in the other
cells, to receive or propagate movement and life for the
common benefit, and to adapt himself to the common tem-
perature and tension.

The man with a passionate sense of the divine Milieu

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Let Me Explain

cannot bear to find things about him obscure, tepid and
empty which should be full and vibrant with God. He feels
as though chilled to the bone by the thought of the number-
less spirits which are linked to his in the unity of the same
world, but are not yet fully kindled by the flame of the di-
vine presence. He had thought for a time that he had only
to stretch out his own hand in order to touch God to the
measure of his desires. He now sees that the only human
embrace capable of worthily enfolding the divine is that of
all men opening their arms to call down and welcome the
Fire. The only subject ultimately capable of mystical trans-
figuration is the whole group of mankind forming a single
body and a single soul in Charity.

And this coalescence of the spiritual units of creation
under the attraction of Christ is the supreme victory of
faith over the world.

Jesus, Saviour of human activity to which you have given
meaning, Saviour of human suffering to which you have
given living value, be also the Saviour of human unity,
compel us to discard our pettinesses, and to venture forth,
resting upon you, into the uncharted ocean of charity.
(M.D. pp. 136-7, 137-8, 140.)

IV. MASS ON THE WORLD! COMMUNICATON WITH
THE RISEN CHRIST

In spite of the strength of St Paul's expressions (formulated,
it should be remembered, for the ordinary run of the first
Christians) some readers may feel that we have been led to
strain, in too realist a direction, the meaning of 'mystical
body' - or at least that we have allowed ourselves to seek
esoteric perspectives in it. But if we look a little more

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Morality and Mysticism

closely, we shall see that we have simply taken another path
in order to rejoin the great highway opened up in the Church
by the onrush of the cult of the Holy Eucharist.

When the priest says the words 'Hoc est Corpus meum\
his words fall directly on to the bread and directly transform
it into the individual reality of Christ. But the great sacra-
mental operation does not ~ease at that local and momentary
event. Even children are taught that, throughout the life of
each man and the life of the Church and the history of the
world, there is only one Mass and one Communion. Christ
died once in agony. Peter and Paul receive communion on
such and such a day at a particular hour. But these different
acts are only the diversely central points in which the con-
tinuity of a unique act is split up and fixed, in space and time,
for our experience. In fact, from the beginning of the Mes-
sianic preparation, up till the Parousia, passing through the
historic manifestation ofjesus and the phases of growth of his
Church, a single event has been developing in the world: the
Incarnation, realized, in each individual, through the Euchar-
ist.

All the communions of a lifetime are one communion.

All the communions of all men now living are one com-
munion

All the communions of all men, present, past and future,
are one communion.

Have we ever sufficiently considered the physical immensity
of man, and his extraordinary relations with the Universe,
in order to realize in our minds the formidable implications
of this elementary truth? (M.D., pp. 1 12-13.)

Grant, O God, that when I draw near to the altar to com-
municate, I may henceforth discern the infinite perspectives

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Let Me Explain

hidden beneath the smallness and the nearness of the Host
in which you are concealed. I have already accustomed my-
self to seeing, beneath the stillness of that piece of bread, a
devouring power which, in the words of the greatest doctors
of your Church, far from being consumed by me, consumes
me. Give me the strength to rise above the remaining illu-
sions which tend to make me think of your touch as cir-
cumscribed and momentary.

I am beginning to understand: under die sacramental
Species it is primarily through the 'accidents' of matter
that you touch me, but, as a consequence, it is also through
the whole Universe in proportion as this ebbs and flows over
me under your primary influence. In a true sense the arms
and the heart which you open to me are nothing less than
all the united powers of the world which, penetrated and
permeated to their depths by your will, your tastes and your
temperament, converge upon my being to form it, nourish
it and bear it along towards the blazing centre of your fire.
In the Host it is my life that you are offering me, O Jesus.
(M.D., pp. 115-16.)

First of all I shall stretch out my hand unhesitatingly to-
wards the fiery bread which you set before me. This bread,
in which you have planted the seed of all that is to develop
in the future, I recognize as containing the source and the
secret of that destiny you have chosen for me. To take it is, I
know, to surrender myself to forces which will tear me away
painfully from myself in order to drive me into danger, into
laborious undertakings, into a constant renewal of ideas,
into an austere detachment where my affections are con-
cerned. To eat it is to acquire a taste and an affinity for that
which in everything is above everything - a taste and an
affinity which will henceforward make impossible for me all

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Morality and Mysticism

the joys by which my life has been warmed. Lord Jesus, I
am willing to be possessed by you, to be bound to your
body and led by its inexpressible power towards those soli-
tary heights which by myself I should never dare to climb.
Instinctively, like all mankind, I would rather set up my
tent here below on some hill-top of my own choosing. I
am afraid, too, like all my fellow-men, of the future too
heavy with mystery and too wholly new, towards which
time is driving me. Then like these men 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 whirl-
pool of conflicts and energies out of which must develop my
power to apprehend and experience your holy presence, I
throw myself, my God, on your word. The man who is
filled with an impassioned love of Jesus hidden in the forces
which bring increase to the earth, him the earth will lift up,
like a mother, in the immensity of her arms, and will en-
able him to contemplate the face of God.

If your Kingdom, my God, were of this world, I could
possess you simply by surrendering myself to the forces
which cause us, through suffering and dying, to grow visibly
in stature - us or that which is dearer to us than ourselves.
But because the term towards which the earth is moving
lies not merely beyond each individual thing but beyond the
totality of things; because the world travails, not to bring
forth from within itself some supreme reality, but to find its
consummation through a union with a pre-existent Being, it
follows that man can never reach a blazing centre of the
universe simply by living more and more for himself or even
by spending his life in the service of some earthly cause how-
ever great. The world can never be definitively united with

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Let Me Explain

you, Lord, save by a sort of reversal, a turning about, an
excentration, which must involve the temporary collapse not
merely of all individual achievements but even of everything
that looks like an advancement for humanity. If my being is
ever to be decisively attached to yours, there must first die
in me not merely the monad ego but also the world : in other
words I must first pass through an agonizing phase of di-
minution for which no tangible compensation will be given
me. That is why, pouring into my chalice the bitterness of all
separation, of all limitations, and of all sterile fallings away,
you then hold it out to me. 'Drink ye all of this.'

How could I refuse this chalice, Lord, now that through
the bread you have given me there has crept into the marrow
of my being an inextinguishable longing to be united with
you beyond life: through death?

My God, I deliver myself up with utter abandon to those
fearful forces of dissolution which, I blindly believe, will
this day cause my narrow ego to be replaced by your divine
presence. The man who is filled with an impassioned love
for Jesus hidden in the forces which bring death to the earth,
him the earth will clasp in the immensity of her arms as her
strength fails, and with her he will awaken in the bosom of
God. (H. U., pp. 29-32.)

You are the irresistible and vivifying force, O Lord, and
because yours is the energy, because, of the two of us, you
are infinitely the stronger, it is on you that falls the part of
consuming me in the union that should weld us together.
Vouchsafe, therefore, something more precious still than
the grace for which all the faithful pray. It is not enough that
I should die while communicating. Teach me to treat my
death as an act of communion. (M.D., p. 70.)



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