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object:4.02 - Autobiographical Evidence
book class:Let Me Explain
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Science
class:chapter


Epilogue

Autobiographical Evidence
1918-1934-1955

Prayer to the Ever-greater
Christ



191 8. Extracts from The Priest

You have shown me the essential task of self-fulfilment in
the plenitude of your incarnate Word, to which the world,
through a chosen part of its whole being, is summoned . . .

The Universality of your divine attraction, and the intrin-
sic value of our human activity - 1 am on fire, Lord, to make
known to all this twofold truth you have revealed to me, and
to make it real. . . .

And I, Lord, for my (very lowly) part, would wish to be
the apostle - and, if I dare be so bold - the evangelist - of
your Christ in the Universe.

Through my thinking, through the message I bring,
through the practical activity of my whole life, I would wish
to disclose and make known to men the bonds of continuity
that make the Cosmos of our restless ferment into an ambi-
ence that is divinized by the Incarnation, that divinizes by
communion, and that is divinizable by our co-operation.

To bring Christ, by virtue of a specifically organic connection,
to the heart of realities that are esteemed to be the most dangerous,
the most unspiritual, the most pagan - in that you have my gospel
and my mission.

If men could only see that in each one of them there is an
element of the Pleroma, would not that, Lord, effect the
reconciliation between God and our age? If only they could
understand that, with all its natural richness and its massive
reality, the universe can find fulfilment only in Christ; and
that Christ, in turn, can be attained only through a universe
that has been carried to the very limit of its capabilities.

To those who are seduced by the treasure-house of the

151



Let Me Explain

Real and overcome by its immediacy - to these I would
show the life of the Lord Jesus flowing through all things -
the true soul of the world.

To those who are dazzled by the nobility of human en-
deavour, I would say, in the name of Christ, that man's
work is sacred, sacred both in the submission of the will to
God, and in the great task it accomplishes in the course of
endless tentative efforts - and that task is the liberation, na-
tural and supernatural,' of Spirit.

To those who are indolent, unenterprising, infantile, or
narrow-minded in their religious attitude, I would point
out that man's development is essential to Christ for the
formation of his Body, and that a constant spirit of inquiry
directed towards the world and truth is an absolute duty. . . .

Lord, to see drawn from so much wealth, lying idle or
put to base uses, all the dynamism that is locked up within
it: this is my dream. And to share in bringing this about:
this is the work to which I would dedicate myself.

As far as my strength will allow me, because I am a priest,
I would henceforth be the first to become aware of what the
world loves, pursues, suffers. I would be the first to seek, to
sympathize, to toil: the first in self-fulfilment, the first in
self-denial - I would be more widely human in my sym-
pathies and more nobly terrestrial in my ambitions than any
of the world's servants.

On the one hand I want to plunge into the midst of cre-
ated things and, mingling with them, seize hold upon and
disengage from them all that they contain of life eternal,
down to the very last fragment, so that nothing may be lost;
and on the other hand I want, by practising the counsels of
perfection, to salvage through self-denial all the heavenly
fire imprisoned within the threefold concupiscence of the

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Epilogue

flesh, of avarice, of pride: in other words, to hallow, through
chastity, poverty, and obedience, the power enclosed in love,
in gold, in independence.

That is why I have taken on my vows and my priesthood
(and it is this that gives me my strength and my happiness),
in a determination to accept and divinize the powers of the
earth. (W.T.W., pp. 206-22.)

In order that the Spirit may ever shine forth in me, that I
may not succumb to the temptation that lies in wait for
every act of boldness, nor ever forget that you alone must
be sought in and through everything, I know, Lord, that
you will send me - at what moments only you know - de-
privations, disappointments, sorrow. The object of my love
will fall away from me, or I shall outgrow it. (W.T.W., p.
126.)



153



1934- Extracts from How I Believe

The originality of my belief lies in its being rooted in two
domains of life which are commonly regarded as antagonis-
tic. By upbringing and intellectual training, I belong to the
'children of heaven'; but by temperament, and by my pro-
fessional studies, I am a 'child of the earth'. Situated thus by
life at the heart of two worlds with whose theory, idiom and
feelings intimate experience has made me familiar, I have not
erected any watertight bulkhead inside myself. On the
contrary, I have allowed two apparently conflicting influ-
ences full freedom to react upon one another deep within
me. And now, at the end of that operation, after thirty
years devoted to the pursuit of interior unity, I have the
feeling that a synthesis has been effected naturally between
the two currents that claim my allegiance. The one has not
destroyed, but has reinforced, the other. Today I believe
probably more profoundly than ever in God, and certainly
more than ever in the world. On an individual scale, may we
not see in this the particular solution, at least in outline, of
the great spiritual problem which the vanguard of mankind,
as it advances, is now coming up against? . . .

For my own part, I set out resolutely in the only direction
in which it seemed to me possible to carry my faith further,
and so retain it. I tried to place at the head of the universe
which I adored from birth, the risen Christ whom others
had taught me to know. And the result of that attempt has
been that I have never for the last twenty-five years ceased
to marvel at the infinite possibilities which the 'universaliza-
tion' of Christ opens up for religious thought

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Epilogue

In truth, the more I have thought about the magnificent
cosmic attributes lavished by St Paul on the risen Christ,
and the more I have considered the masterful significance of
the Christian virtues, the more clearly have I realized that
Christianity takes on its full value only when extended (as I
find it rewarding to do) to cosmic dimensions. Inexhaustibly
fructified by one another, my individual faith in the world
and my Christian faith in Christ have never ceased to develop
and grow more profound. By this sign, which argues a
continual agreement between what is most determinedly
emergent in me and what is most alive in the Christian
religion, I have finally and permanently recognized that in
the latter I have found the complement 1 sought to my own
self, and to that I have surrendered.

But, if I have thus surrendered myself, why should not
others, all others, also do the same? . . .

The passion for the world from which my faith springs;
the dissatisfaction, too, which I experience at first when I am
confronted by any of the ancient forms of religion - are not
both these traces in my heart of the uneasiness and expec-
tancy which characterize the religious state of the world to-
day? . . .

In that case, surely the solution for which modern mankind
is seeking must essentially be exactly the solution which I
have come upon. I believe that this is so, and it is in this
vision that my hopes are fulfilled. A general convergence of
religions upon a universal Christ who fundamentally satis-
fies them all: that seems to be the only possible conversion
of the world, and the only form in which a religion of the
future can be conceived. (How I Believe, pp. 7-8, 39, 40-1.)



155



1955- Extracts from Le Christique



Conclusion: The Promised Land

Energy becoming transformed into Presence.

And in consequence the possibility can be seen, opening
up for man, of not only believing and hoping but (something
much more unexpected and valuable) of loving, co-exten-
sively and co-organically with the whole past, the present
and the future of a Universe that is in process of concentrat-
ing upon itself. ...

It would seem that a single ray of such a light falling like a
spark, no matter where, on the Noosphere, would be bound
to produce an explosion of such violence that it would al-
most instantaneously set the face of the earth ablaze and make
it entirely new.

How is it, then, that as I look around me, still dazzled by
what I have seen, I find that I am almost the only person of
my kind, the only one to have seen? And so, I cannot, when
asked, quote a single writer, a single work, that gives a
clearly expressed description of the wonderful 'Diaphany' that
has transfigured everything for me?

How, most of all, can it be that 'when I come down from
the mountain' and in spite of the glorious vision I still retain,
I find that I am so little a better man, so little at peace, so
incapable of expressing in my actions, and thus adequately
communicating to others, the wonderful unity that I feel
encompassing me?

Is there in fact a Universal Christ, is there a divine
Milieu?

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Epilogue

Or am I, after all, simply the dupe of a mirage in my own
mind?

I often ask myself that question.

Every time, however, tliat I begin to doubt, three suc-
cessive waves of evidence rise up from deep within me to
counter that doubt, sweeping away from my mind the mis-
taken fear that my 'Christie' may be no more than an illu-
sion.

First there is the evidence provided by the coherence that
this ineffable Element (or Milieu) introduces into the under-
lying depths of my mind and heart. As, of course, I know only
too well, in spite of the ambitious grandeur of my ideas, I
am still, in practice imperfect to a disturbing degree. For all
the claims implicit in its expression, my faith does not pro-
duce in me as much real charity, as much calm trust, as the
catechism still taught to children produces in the humble
worshipper kneeling beside me. Nevertheless I know too
that this sophisticated faith, of which I make such poor
use, is the only faith I can tolerate, the only faith that can
satisfy me - and even (of this I am certain) the only one
that can meet the needs of the simple souls, the good folk, of
tomorrow.

Next there is the evidence provided by the contagious
power of a form of charity in which it becomes possible to
love God 'not only with all one's body and all one's soul'
but with the whole Universe-in-evolution. It would be
impossible for me, as I admitted earlier, to quote a single
'authority' (religious or lay) of whom I could claim that in it
I can fully recognize myself, whether in relation to my 'cos-
mic' or my 'Christie' vision. On the other hand, I cannot
fail to feel around me - if only from the way in which 'my
ideas' are becoming more widely accepted - the pulsation of

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Let Me Explain

countless people who are all - ranging from the border-
line of unbelief to the depths of the cloister - thinking and
feeling, or at least beginning vaguely to feel, just as I do. It
is indeed heartening to know that I am not a lone discoverer
but that I am, quite simply, responding to the vibration that
(given a particular condition of Christianity and of the world)
is necessarily active in all the souls around me. It is, in conse-
quence, exhilarating to feel that I am not just myself or all
alone, that my name is legion, that I am 'all men and that
this is true even in as much as the single-mindedness of to-
morrow can be recognized as throbbing into life in the
depths of my being.

Finally, there is the evidence contained in the superiority
of my vision compared with what I had been taught - even
though there is at the same time an identity with it. Because
of their very function, neither the God who draws us to
himself, nor the world whose evolution we share, can be a
less powerful stimulant than we conceive and need. In either
case - unless we are going to accept a positive discord in the
very stuff of things - it is in the direction of the fullest that
truth lies. Now, as we saw earlier, it is in the 'Christie' that,
in the century in which we live, the Divine reaches the sum-
mit of adorability, and the evolutionary the extreme limit
of activation. This can mean only one thing, that it is in that
direction that the human must inevitably incline, there,
sooner or later, to find unity.

Once that is realized, I immediately find a perfectly
natural explanation for my isolation and apparent idiosyn-
crasy.

Everywhere on earth, at this moment, in the new spiritual
atmosphere created by the idea of evolution, there float, in a
state of extreme mutual sensitivity, love of God and faith in

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Epilogue

the world: the two essential components of the Ultra-
human. These two components are everywhere 'in the air' ;
generally, however, they are not strong enough, both at the
same time, to combine with one another in one and the same
subject. In me, it happens by chance (temperament, upbring-
ing, background) that the proportion of one to the other is
correct, and the fusion of the two has been effected spontane-
ously - not as yet with sufficient force to spread explosively
- but strong enough nevertheless to make it clear that the
process is possible - and that sooner or later there will be a
chain-reaction.

This is one more proof that the Truth has to appear only
once, in one single mind, for it to be impossible for anything
ever to prevent it from spreading universally and setting
everything ablaze.

(Unpublished.)



159




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