object:4.04 - In the Total Christ
book class:Hymn of the Universe
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
class:chapter
IN THE TOTAL CHBIST
58
/Since Jesus was born, and grew to his full stature,
and died, everything has continued to move for-
ward because Christ is not yet fully formed: he has
not yet gathered about him the last folds of his
robe of flesh and of love which is made up of his
faithful followers. The mystical Christ has not yet
attained to his full growth; and therefore the same
is true of the cosmic Christ. Both of these are si-
multaneously in the state of being and of becom-
ing; and it is from the prolongation of this process
of becoming that all created activity ultimately
springs. Christ is the end point of the evolution,
even the natural evolution, of all beings; and there-
fore evolution is holy?^
138 Hymn of the Universe
59
In manus tuas commendo spiritum tneum* Into
the hands which broke and quickened the bread,
which blessed and caressed little children, which
were pierced with the nails; into the hands which
are like our hands, the hands of which one can
never tell what they will do with the object they
are holding, whether they will break it or heal it,
but which we know will always obey and reveal
impulses filled with kindness and will always clasp
us ever more closely, ever more jealously; into the
gentle and mighty hands which can reach down
into the very depth of tibe soul, the hands which
fashion, which create, the hands through which
flows out so great a love: into these hands it is com-
forting to surrender oneself, especially if one is
suffering or afraid. And there is both great happi-
ness and great merit in so doing.
60
It is the whole of my being, Lord Jesus, that you
would have me give you, tree and fruit alike, the
finished work as well as the harnessed power, the
opus together with the operation. To allay your
hunger and slake your thirst, to nourish your body
and bring it to its full stature, you need to find in
us a substance which will truly be food for you.
And this food ready to be transformed into you,
this nourishment for your flesh, I will prepare for
* "Into thy hands I commend my spirit." (Luke 23.46.)
TensSes 139
you by liberating the spirit in myself and in every-
thing:
through an effort (even a purely natural effort)
to learn the truth, to live the good, to create the
beautiful;
through cutting away all inferior and evil ener-
gies;
through practicing that charity towards all men
which alone can gather up the multitude into a
single soul. ...
To promote, in however small a degree, the
awakening of spirit in the world is to offer to the in-
carnate Word an increase of reality and stability; it
is to allow his influence to grow in intensity around
us.
61
Through everything in me that has subsistence and
resonance, everything that enlarges me from-
within, everything that arouses me, attracts me,
wounds me from without: through all these, Lord,
you work upon me, you mold and spiritualize my
formless clay, you transform me into yourself.
In order to take possession of me, my God, you
who are so much more remote in your immensity
and so much deeper in the intimacy of your ind-
welling than all things else, you take to yourself
and unite together the immensity of the world and
the intimate depths of my being: and I am con-
scious of bearing deep within me all the strain and
struggle of the universe.
But, Lord, I do not just passively give way to
140 Hymn of the Universe
these blessed passivities: I offer myself to them, ac-
tively, and do all I can to promote them.
I know how the life-giving power of the host can
be blocked by our freedom of will. If I seal up the
entry into my heart I must dwell in darkness — and
not only I, my individual soul, but the whole uni-
verse in so far as its activity sustains my organism
and awakens my consciousness, and in so far also as
I act upon it in my turn so as to draw forth from it
the materials of sensation, of ideas, of moral good-
ness, of holiness of life. But if on the other hand my
heart is open to you, then at once through the pure
intent of my will the divine must flood into the uni-
verse in so far as the universe is centered on me.
Since, by virtue of my consent, I shall have become
a living particle of the body of Christ, all that
affects me must in the end help on the growth of
the total Christ. Christ will flood into me and over
me, me and my cosmos.
How I long, Lord Christ, for this to bel
May my acceptance be ever more complete,
more comprehensive, more intense!
May my being, in its self-offering to you, become
ever more open and more transparent to your
influence!
And may I thus feel your activity coming ever
closer, your presence growing ever more intense,
everywhere around me.
Fiat, fiat.
PensSes 141
62
If we look at the world simultaneously from an
evolutionary and a spiritual point of view we shall
see it as being a tremendous responsibility but also,
even at the lowliest stages of belief in God, we
shall see it as glowing with an irresistible attrac-
tion. For then it is not just a few privileged crea-
tures that are seen as capable of satisfying each
man's essential need of finding something to love
him and complement him: it is, thanks to these few
and as a sort of reflection of them, the sum total of
all the beings engaged together with him in the uni-
fying work of the cosmos. In the last resort each
element can find its beatitude only in union with
the totality and with the transcendent Center re-
quired to set the totality in motion. Consequently,
if it is not possible for him, psychologically to sur-
round each being with that particular, overflowing
affection which characterizes our human love, at
least he can nurture in his heart that generalized
but none the less real affection for all that is which
will cause him to cherish in each thing, over and
above its surface qualities, the being itself — that is
to say, that indefinable, elect part of each thing
which, under God's influence, gradually becomes
flesh of his flesh.
Such a love has no exact equivalent among the
various kinds of attachment to be found in our or-
dinary human relationships. Its "material object"
(as the Schoolmen would say)* is so immense and
* The material object of (for instance) a science is the sub-
ject matter, in general, with which it is concerned; its for-
■ -/-. - . "
142 Hymn of the Universe
its "formal object" so profound that it can be ex-
pressed only in terms at once of marriage and of
adoration. In it, all distinction between egoism and
disinterestedness tends to evaporate. Each one
loves himself and seeks his own fulfillment in the
fulfillment of all the rest; and the least gesture of
possession turns into an effort to attain, in the far-
distant future, to what shall be the same in all.
63
Henceforth we know enough — and it is already a
great deal— to be able to say that these onward
gropings of life will succeed only in one condition:
that the whole endeavor shall have unity as its key-
note. Of its very nature the advance of the biologi-
cal process demands this. Outside this atmosphere
of a union glimpsed and longed for, the most legiti-
mate demands are bound to lead to catastrophe:
we can see this only too clearly at the present mo-
ment. On the other hand, once this atmosphere is
created almost any solution will seem as good as all
the others, and every sort of effort will succeed, at
least in the beginning. Thus, if in dealing with the
problem of the various human races, their appear-
ance, their awakening, their future, we start from
its purely biological roots, it will lead us to recog-
nize that the only climate in which man can con-
mal object is the specific aspect under which that subject
matter is studied. Thus man is the material object alike of
anthropology, psychology, physiology and so on, the formal
object being different in each case.
PensSes 143
tinue to grow is that of devotion and self-denial in
a spirit of brotherhood. In truth, at the rate the
consciousness and the ambitions of the world are
increasing, it will explode unless it learns to love.
The future of the thinking earth is organically
bound up with the turning of the forces of hate into
forces of charity,
64
Though the phenomena of the lower world remain
the same — the material determinisms, the vicissi-
tudes of chance, the laws of labor, the agitations of
men, the footfalls of death — he who dares to be-
lieve reaches a sphere of created reality in which
things, while retaining their habitual texture, seem
to be made out of a different substance. Everything
remains the same so far as phenomena are con-
cerned, but at the same time everything becomes
luminous, animated, loving. . . .
Through the workings of faith, Christ appears,
Christ is born, without any violation of nature's
laws, in the heart of the world.
65
As the years go by, Lord, I come to see more and
more clearly, in myself and in those around me,
that the great secret preoccupation of modern man
is much less to battle for possession of the world
than to find a means of escaping from it. The an-
guish of feeling that one is not merely spatially but
ontologically imprisoned in the cosmic bubble; the
144 Hymn of the Universe
anxious search for an issue to, or more exactly a
focal point for, the evolutionary process: these are
the prices we must pay for the growth of planetary
consciousness; these are the dimly-recognized bur- v
dens which weigh down the souls of Christian and
gentile alike in the world of today.
Now that humanity has become conscious of the
movement which carries it onwards it has more and
more need of finding, above and beyond itself, an
infinite objective, an infinite issue, to which it can
wholly dedicate itself.
And what is this infinity? The effect of twenty
centuries of mystical travail has been precisely to
show us that the Baby of Bethlehem, the Man on
the Cross, is also the Principle of all movement and
the unifying Center of the world: how then can we
fail to identify this God not merely of the old cos-
mos but also of the new cosmogenesis, this God so
greatly sought after by our generation, with you,
Lord Jesus, you who make him visible to our eyes
and bring him close to us?
66
Let us leave the surface and, without leaving the
world, plunge into God. There, and from there, in
him and through him we shall hold all things and
have command of all things, we shall find again the
essence and the splendor of all the flowers, the
lights, we have had to surrender here and now in
order to be faithful to life. Those beings whom here
and now we despair of ever reaching and influenc-
ing, they too will be there, united together at that
Pens6e$ 145
central point in their being which is at once the
most vulnerable, the most receptive and the most
enriching. There, even the least of our desires and
our endeavors will be gathered and preserved, and
be able to evoke instantaneous vibration from the
very heart of the universe.
Let us then establish ourselves in the divine
milieu. There, we shall be within the inmost depths
of souls and the greatest consistency of matter.
There, at the confluence of all the forms of beauty,
we shall discover the ultravital, ultraperceptible,
ultraactive point of the universe; and, at the same
time, we shall experience in the depths of our own
being the effortless deployment of the plenitude of
all our powers of action and of adoration.
For it is not merely that at that privileged point
all the external springs of the world are coordi-
nated and harmonized: there is the further, com-
plementary marvel that the man who surrenders
himself to the divine milieu feels his own inward
powers directed and enlarged by it with a sureness
which enables him effortlessly to avoid the all too
numerous reefs on which mystical quests have so
often foundered.
67
Lord, once again I ask: which is the more precious
of these two beatitudes, that all things are means
through which I can touch you, or that you your-
self are so "universal" that I can experience you and
lay hold on you in every creature?
Some think to make you more lovable in my eyes
146 Hymn of the Universe
by praising almost exclusively the charm and the
kindness of your human face as men saw it long
ago on earth. But if I sought only a human being to
cherish, would I not turn to those whom you have
given me here and now in all the charm of their
flowering? Do we not all have around us irresistibly
lovable mothers, brothers, sisters, friends? Why
should we go searching the Judaea of two thousand
years ago? No, what I cry out for, like every other
creature, with my whole being, and even with all
my passionate earthly longings, is something very
different from an equal to cherish: It is a God to
adore.
68
Lord Jesus, Master before whose beauty and all-
demanding love we have cause to tremble: turning
my eyes away from what my human weakness can-
not as yet understand and therefore cannot bear to
think about — the idea that there are in reality souls
eternally damned* — I would at least make the con-
stant somber menace of damnation a part of my ha-
bitual and practical vision of the world, not so
much in order to fear you, but rather in order to
become more passionately surrendered to you.
* According to Catholic teaching, the existence of hell,. of a
state of eternal damnation, is an article of faith (as indeed,
given free will and evil, it is a logical necessity); but that
some human beings are or will be in fact damned is not an
article of faith (though again logically it must be regarded
as a possibility): hence Pere Teilhard's prayer further on in
this passage, (Tr. note.)
Pensies 147
A moment ago I cried out to you: be to me, Lord
Jesus, not only a brother, but a God. And now, pan-
oplied as you are in that fearsome power of choos-
ing and rejecting which places you at the world's
summit as principle of universal attraction and
universal repulsion, now you do truly appear to me
as that vast and vital force which I sought every-
where that I might adore it And now I realize that
the fires of hell and the fires of heaven are not two
different forces but are contrary manifestations of
one and the same energy.
Let not the hell-flames touch me, Master, nor any
of those I love, nor indeed anyone at all (and I
know, my Lord and God, that you will forgive me
the audacity of my prayer), but may their somber
glow, and all the abysses they reveal, be for each
and all of us incorporated into the blazing pleni-
tude of your divine milieu.
69
lift up your head, Jerusalem, and see the immense
multitude of those who build and those who seek;
see all those who toil in laboratories, in studios, in
factories, in the deserts and in the vast crucible of
human society. For all the ferment produced by
their labors, in art, in science, in thought, all is for
you.
Therefore open wide your arms, open wide your
heart, and like Christ your Lord welcome the
wave-flow, the flood, of the sap of humanity. Take
it to yourself, for without its baptism you will
wither away for lack of longing as a flower withers
148 Hymn of the Universe
for lack of water; and preserve it and care for it,
since without your sun it will go stupidly to waste
in sterile shoots.
What has become of the temptations aroused by
a world too vast in its horizons, too seductive in its
beauty?
They no longer exist.
The earth mother can indeed take me now into
the immensity of her arms. She can enlarge me
with her life, or take me back into her primordial
dust She can adorn herself for me with every al-
lurement, every horror, every mystery. She can in-
toxicate me with the scent of her tangibility and
her unity. She can throw me to my knees in expec-
tancy of what is maturing in her womb.
But all her enchantments can no longer harm me,
since she has become for me, more than herself and
beyond herself, the body of him who is and who is
to come.
70
To read the gospel with an open mind is to see
beyond all possibility of doubt that Jesus came to
bring us new truths concerning our destiny: not
only a new life superior to that we are conscious of,
but also in a very real sense a new physical power
of acting upon our temporal world.
Through a failure to grasp the exact nature of
this power newly bestowed on all who put their
confidence in God — a failure due either to a hesita-
tion in face of what seems to us so unlikely or to a
fear of falling into illuminism — many Christians
Pensies 149
neglect this earthly aspect of the promises of the
Master, or at least do hot give themselves to it with
that complete hardihood which he nevertheless
never tires of asking of us, if only we have ears to
hear him.
We must not allow timidity or modesty to turn us
into poor craftsmen. If it is true that the develop-
ment of the world can be influenced by our faith in
Christ, then to let this power He dormant within us
would indeed be unpardonable,
71
God, who cannot in any way blend or be mingled
with the creation which he sustains and animates
and binds together, is nonetheless present in the
birth, the growth and the consummation of all
things.
The earthly undertaking which is beyond all par-
allel is the physical incorporation of the faithful
into Christ and therefore into God. And this su-
preme work is carried out with the exactitude and
the harmony of a natural process of evolution.
At the inception of the undertaking there had to
be a transcendent act which, in accordance with
mysterious but physically regulated conditions,
should graft the person of a God into the human
cosmos. This was the Incarnation: Et Verbum caro
factum est.* And from this first, basic contact of
God with our human race, and precisely by virtue
of this penetration of the divine into our human na-
* "And the Word was made Flesh." (John 1.14.)
150 Hymn of the Universe
ture, a new life was born: that unforeseeable ag-
grandizement and "obediential"* extension of our
natural capacities which we call "grace." Now
grace is the sap which, rising in the one trunk,
spreads through all the veins in obedience to the
pulsations of the one heart; it is the nerve-impulse
flowing through all the members at the command
of the one brain; and the radiant Head, the mighty
Heart, the fruitful Tree are, of necessity, Christ.
(^The Incarnation means the renewal, the restora-
tion, of all the energies and powers of the universe;
Christ is the instrument, the Center and the End of
all creation, animate and material; through him ev-
erything is created, hallowed, quickened. This is
the constant, general teaching of St John and St
Paul (that most "cosmic" of sacred writers), a
teaching which has passed into the most solemn
phrases of the liturgy, but which we repeat and
which f uture generations will go on repeating to
the end without ever being able to master or to
measure its profound and mysterious meaning,
bound up as it is with the comprehension of the
universeTl
72
Only love can bring individual beings to their per-
fect completion, as individuals, by uniting them
* An obediential potentiality is one whose actualization
goes beyond the natural, innate limitations of its subject,
while not being irreconcilable with those limitations, e.g. the
direct intuition of God in the beatific vision. (Tr. note.)
Tens6e$ 151
one with another, because only loves takes posses-
sion of them and unites them by what lies deepest
within them. This is simply a fact of our everyday
experience. For indeed at what moment do lovers
come into the most complete possession of them-
selves if not when they say they are lost in one
another? And is not love all the time achieving—
in couples, in teams, all around us — the magical
and reputedly contradictory feat of personalizing
through totalizing? And why should not what is
thus daily achieved on a small scale be repeated
one day on worldwide dimensions?
Humanity, the spirit of the earth, the synthesis of
individuals and peoples, the paradoxical concilia-
tion of the element with the whole, of the one with
the many: all these are regarded as Utopian fan-
tasies, yet they are biologically necessary; and if we
would see them made flesh in the world what more
need we do than imagine our power to love grow-
ing and broadening till it can embrace the totality
of men of the earth?
73
You, Lord Jesus, are the epitome and the crown of
all perfection, human and cosmic. No flash of
beauty, no enchantment of goodness, no element of
force, but finds in you the ultimate refinement and
consummation of itself. To possess you is in truth to
hold gathered into a single object the perfect as-
semblage of all that the universe can give us and
make us dream of. The unique savor of the glory
and wonder of your being has so effectively drawn
152 Hymn of the Universe
out from the earth and synthetized all the most ex-
quisite savors that the earth contains or can suggest
that now we can find them, endlessly, one after an-
other according to our desires, in you — you the
Bread that "holds within it every delight."
You who are yourself the plenitudo entis creati,
the fullness of created being, Lord Jesus, are also
the plenitudo entis met, the fullness of my own per-
sonal being, and of all living creatures who accept
your dominion. In you and in you alone, as in a
boundless abyss, our powers can launch forth into
activity and find surcease for their tensions, can
show their full capacity without encountering any
limitation, can plunge into love and into the wild
abandon of love with the certainty of finding in
your depths no wreck-rocks of failure, no shallows
of pettiness, no currents of perverted truth.
By you and by you alone, who are the entire and
proper object of our love and the creative energy
that fathoms the secrets of our hearts and the mys-
tery of our growth, our souls are awakened, sensi-
tized, enlarged, to the utmost limit of their latent
potentialities.
And under your influence and yours alone, the
sheath of organic isolation and of willful egoism
which separates the monads from one another is
cleft asunder and dissolves, and the multitude of
souls rush on towards that union which is necessary
for the maturity of the world.
Thus a third plenitude is added to the other two.
In a very real sense, Lord Jesus, you are the ple-
nitudo entium, the full assemblage of all the beings
who shelter, and meet and are forever united,
PensSes 153
within the mystical bonds of your body. In your
breast, my God, better than in any embrace, I pos-
sess all those whom I love and who are illumined
by, your beauty and in their turn illumine you with
the rays of light (so powerful in their effect on our
hearts) which they receive from you and send back
to you. That multitude of beings, so daunting in its
magnitude, that I so long to help, to enlighten, to
lead to you: it is already there, Lord, gathered to-
gether within you. Through you I can reach into
the inmost depths of every being and endow them
with whatever I will — provided that I know how to
ask you, and that you permit it
74
The principle of unity which saves our guilty
world, wherein all is in process of returning to dust,
is Christ. Through the force of his magnetism, the
light of his ethical teaching, the unitive power of
his very being, Jesus establishes again at the heart
of the world the harmony of all endeavors and the
convergence of all beings. Let us read the gospel
boldly and we shall see that no idea can better con-
vey to our minds the redemptive function of the
Word than that of a unification of all flesh in one
and the same Spirit.
Jesus clothed his divine personality alike in the
most palpable and in the most inward beauty and
charm of human individuality. He adorned this hu-
manity with the most enchanting and captivating
splendors of the universe. And then he came
amongst us and showed himself to us as that which
154 Hymn of the Universe
we could never have thought to see: the synthesis
of all perfections so that now each man must of ne-
cessity see him and feel his presence, and must ei-
ther hate or love what he sees.
75
Lord God, when I go up to your altar for commun-
ion, grant that I may derive from it a discernment
of the infinite perspectives hidden beneath the
smallness and closeness of the host in which you
are concealed. Already I have accustomed myself
to recognize beneath the inertness of the morsel of
bread a consuming power which, as the greatest
Doctors of your Church have said, far from being
absorbed into me, absorbs me into itself. Help me
now to overcome that remaining illusion which
would make me think of you as touching me only
in a limited and momentary way.
I begin to understand: under the sacramental
species you- touch me first of all through the
"accidents" of matter, of the material bread; but
then, in consequence of this, you touch me also
through the entire universe inasmuch as the entire
universe, thanks to that primary influence, ebbs and
flows over me. 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, per-
meated through and through by your will, your in-
clinations, your temperament, bend over my being
to form it and feed it and draw it into the blazing
center of your infinite fire. In the host, Lord Jesus,
you offer me my life*
PensSes 155
76
We who are Christ's disciples must not hesitate to
harness this force — the world's expectancy and fer-
ment and unfolding — which needs us and which
we need. On the contrary, under pain of allowing it
to be dissipated and of perishing ourselves, we
must share in those aspirations, in essence authenti-
cally religious, which make men today so intensely
aware of the immensity of the world, the grandeur
of the mind and the sacred value of every newly
discovered truth. This is the schooling which will
teach our present Christian generation how to
await the future.
We have long been profoundly aware of these
perspectives: the progress of the universe, and
especially the human universe, does not take place
in rivalry with God, nor is it a vain squandering of
the energies we owe to him. The greater man be-
comes and the more humanity becomes one, con-
scious of its power and able to control it, the more
beautiful creation will be, the more perfect adora-
tion will become, and the more Christ will find, for
the mystical extensions of his humanity, a body
worthy of resurrection. The world can no more
have two summits of fulfillment than a circumfer-
ence can have two centers. The star which the
world is awaiting though it does not as yet know its
name, though it cannot as yet appreciate exactly its
transcendence, cannot even distinguish the most
spiritual, the most divine of its rays: this star can-
not be other than that very Christ in whom we
hope. To look with longing to the Parousia of the
156 Hymn of the Universe
Son of Man we have only to allow to beat within
our breasts — and to Christianize — the heart of the
world.
77
Death will not simply throw us back into the great
flux of reality, as the pantheist's picture of beati-
tude would have us believe. Nevertheless in death
we are caught up, overwhelmed, dominated by
that divine power which lies within the forces of
inner disintegration and, above all, within that ir-
resistible yearning which will drive the separated
soul on to complete its further, predestined jour-
ney as infallibly as the sun causes the mists to rise
from the water on which it shines. Death surren-
ders us completely to God; it makes us pass into
God. In return we have to surrender ourselves to
it, in love and in the abandon of love, since, when
death comes to us, there is nothing further for us
to do but let ourselves be entirely dominated and
led onwards by God.
78
Because, Lord, by every innate impulse and
through all the hazards of my life I have been
driven ceaselessly to search for you and to set you
in the heart of the universe of matter, I shall have
the joy, when death comes, of closing my eyes
amidst the splendor of a universal transparency
aglow with fire. . . .
It is as if the fact of bringing together and con-
Pensdes 157
necting the two poles, tangible and intangible, ex-
ternal and internal, of the world which bears us
onwards had caused everything to burst into flames
and set everything free.
In the guise of a tiny baby in its mother's arms,
obeying the great laws of birth and infancy, you
came, Lord Jesus, to dwell in my infant-soul; and
then, as you reenacted in me — and in so doing ex-
tended the range of — your growth through the
Church, that same humanity which once was born
and dwelt in Palestine began now to spread out
gradually everywhere like an iridescence of un-
numbered hues through which, without destroying
anything, your presence penetrated — and endued
with supervitality — every other presence about me.
And all this took place because, in a universe
which was disclosing itself to me as structurally
convergent, you, by right of your resurrection, had
assumed the dominating position of all-inclusive
Center in which everything is gathered together,
79
Your call, my God, as it comes to men has innumer-
able different shades of meaning: each vocation is
essentially different from all the rest.
The various regions, nations, social groupings,
have each their particular apostles.
And I, Lord God, for my (very lowly) part,
would wish to be the apostle — and, if I dare say so,
the evangelist — of your Christ in the universe.
For you gave me the gift of sensing, beneath the
incoherence of the surface, the deep, living unity
158 Hymn of the Universe
which your grace has mercifully thrown over our
heart breaking plurality.
The universality of your divine magnetism, and
the intrinsic value of our human undertakings: this,
my God, is the twofold truth you have shown me,
and I am burning to spread abroad the knowledge
of it and to bring it fully into effect
If you judge me worthy, Lord God, I would
show to those whose lives are dull and drab the
limitless horizons opening out to humble and hid-
den efforts; for these efforts, if pure in intention,
can add to the extension of the incarnate Word a
further element — an element known to Christ's
heart and gathered up into his immortality.
You disclosed to me the essential vocation of the
world: to attain to its completion, through a chosen
part of its whole being, in the plenitude of the in-
carnate Word.
In order to take possession of me, my God, you
who are so much more remote in your immensity
and so much deeper in the intimacy of your in-
dwelling than all things else, you take to yourself
and unite together the immensity of the world and
the intimate depths of my being.
I realize that the totality of all perfections, even
natural perfections, is then necessary basis for that
mystical and ultimate organism which you are con-
structing out of all things. You do not destroy,
Lord, the beings you adopt for your building; but
you transform them while preserving everything
good that the centuries of creation have fashioned
in them.
PensSes 159
The whole world is concentrated and uplifted in
expectancy of union with the divine; yet at the
same time it encounters an insurmountable barrier.
For nothing can come to Christ unless he himself
takes it and gathers it into himself.
Toward Christ all the immortal monads con-
verge. Not a single atom, however lowly or imper-
fect, but must cooperate — at least by way of repul-
sion or reflection — in the fulfillings of Christ
Only sin is excluded from the Pleroma. And even
so, since to be damned is not to be annihilated, who
shall say what mysterious complement might be
given to the body of Christ by that immortal loss?
Through their diminution in Christo Jesu, those
who mortify themselves, who suffer, who bear old
age with patience, cross over the critical threshold
where death is turned into life. Through forgetting
the self they are given to find it, never to lose it
again.
The universe takes on the lineaments of Jesus;
but then there is great mystery: for he who thus be-
comes discernible is Jesus crucified.
Christ is loved as a person; he compels recogni-
tion as a world.
80
Lord Jesus, when it was given me to see where the
dazzling trail on particular beauties and partial
harmonies was leading, I recognized that it was all
coming to center on a single point, a single person:
yourself. Every presence makes me feel that you
160 Hymn of the Universe
are near me; every touch is the touch of your hand;
every necessity transmits to me a pulsation of your
will.
That the Spirit may always 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 ev-
erything, you, Lord, will send me — at what mo-
ments only you know — deprivations, disappoint-
ments, sorrow.
What is to be brought about is more than a
simple union: it is a transformation, in the course of
which the only thing our human activity can do is,
humbly, to make ourselves ready, and to accept.
Seeing the mystic immobile, crucified or rapt in
prayer, some may perhaps think that his activity is
in abeyance or has left this earth: they are mis-
taken. Nothing in the world is more intensely alive
and active than purity and prayer, which hang like
an unmoving light between the universe and God.
Through their serene transparency flow the waves
of creative power, charged with natural virtue and
with grace. What else but this is the Virgin Mary?
81
Christian love, Christian charity: I know from ex-
perience how for the most part these words evoke
in non-Christians either a kindly or a malicious in-
credulity. The idea of loving God and the world,
they object, is surely a psychological absurdity.
How is one in fact to love the intangible, the uni-
versal? And then in so far as it can be said more or
PensSes 161
less metaphorically that a love of all and of the All
is possible, is not this inward activity, far from
being specifically Christian, familiar to the mystics
of India or Persia and to many more?
And yet, are not the facts there before our eyes,
physically, almost brutally, to prove the contrary?
In the first place, say what one will, a love, a true
love of God is perfectly possible: were it not, all
the monasteries and all the churches on earth
would be emptied in a moment, and Christianity,
for all its framework of ritual, of precepts, of hier-
archy, would quite inevitably crumble away into
nothingness.
In the second place, this love certainly has in
Christianity a strength which is not found else-
where: otherwise, despite all the virtues and all
the attraction of the tenderness which characterizes
the gospel, the doctrine of the beatitudes and of the
Cross would long since have given place to some
other, more winning, creed — and more particularly
to some form of humanism or belief in purely
earthly values.
Whatever the merits of other religions, it remains
an undeniable fact— explain it how one will — that
the most ardent and most massive blaze of collec-
tive love that has ever appeared in the world burns
here and now in the heart of the Church of God.
SOURCES OF THE PENSEES
The Presence of God
in the World
1. La Vie Cosmique, March 24, 1916 (unpublished),
2. Mon Univers, March 25, 1924 (unpublished). 3.
L 'Apparition de VHomme. 4. Le Milieu Mystique,
1917 (unpublished). 5. Le Milieu Mystique, 1917
(unpublished). 6. La Vision du PassS. 7. La Vision
du PassS. 8. The Phenomenon of Man. 9. Le Milieu
Divin. 10. Le Milieu Divin. 11. Le Milieu Mystique,
1917 (unpublished). 12. The Future of Man. 13.
The Phenomenon of Man. 14. Le Milieu Divin. 15.
Le Milieu Divin. 16. The Future of Man. 17. Le
Milieu Divin. 18. Le Milieu Mystique, 1917 (un-
published). 19. Le Milieu Divin.
Humanity in Progress
20. La Signification et la Valeur constructrices de la
Souffrance/UUmon Catholique des Malades," 1933.
21. La Signification et la Valeur constructrices de la
Souffrance, "L'Union Catholique des Malades," 1933.
22. La Milieu Mystique, 1917 (unpublished). 23. La
Foi qui Opdre, 1918 (unpublished). 24. The Future
of Man. 25. Le Milieu Mystique, 1917 (unpub-
PensSes 163
lished). 26. Notes de Retraites, 1944-55 (unpub-
lished). 27. La Vision du PassS. 28. The Phenom-
enon of Man. 29. The Phenomenon of Man. 30. he
Milieu Divin. 31. The Future of Man. 32. La Vision
du PassS. 33. La Vision du PassS. 34. The Phenom-
enon of Man. 35. The Future of Man. 36. Le Mys-
tique, 1917 (unpublished). 37. Le Milieu Divin.
38. Le Milieu Divin. 39. Le Milieu Divin.
The Meaning of
Human Endeavor
40. Letter to M.T.-C, of November 13, 1916. 41. Le
PrStre, 1918 (unpublished). 42. La Signification et
la Valeur constructrices de la Souffrance, "I/Union
Catholique des Malades," 1933. 43. Le Milieu Mys-
tique, 1917 (unpublished). 44. V Apparition de
L * Homme. 45. Le Milieu Mystique, 1917 (unpub-
lished). 46. La Lutte contre la Multitude, 1917 (un-
published). 47. The Phenomenon of Man. 48. Le
PrStre, 1918 (unpublished). 49. La Lutte contre La
Multitude, 1917 (unpublished). 50. The Phenom-
enon of Man. 51. The Phenomenon of Man. 52. Le
PrStre, 1918 (unpublished). 53. Le Milieu Divin.
54. Le Milieu Divin. 55. Le Milieu Divin. 56. La Foi
qui Opdre, 1918 (unpublished). 57. Le Milieu Divin.
In the Total Christ
58. La Vie Cosmique, March 24, 1916 (unpub-
lished). 59. Letter to M.T.-C, November 23, 1916
(unpublished). 60. Le PrStre, 1$18 (unpublished).
61. Le PrStre, 1918 (unpublished). 62. La Vision du
164 Hymn of the Universe
Passi. 63. La Vision du PassS. 64. La Fox qui Opdre,
1918 (unpublished). 65. Le Coeur de la Matiere,
1950 (unpublished). 66. Le Milieu Divin. 67. Le
Milieu Divin. 68. Le Milieu Divin. 69. Le Milieu
Divin. 70. La Foi qui Opdre, 1918 (unpublished).
71. La Vie Cosmique, March 24, 1916 and The Fu-
ture of Man. 72. The Phenomenon of Man. 73. Le
Pretre, 1918 (unpublished). 74. La Lutte contre la
Multitude, 1917 (unpublished). 75. Le Milieu Divin.
76. Le Milieu Divin. 77. Letter to M.T.-C, Novem-
ber 13, 1916. 78. Le Coeur de la Matidre, 1950 (un-
published). 79. Le PrStre, 1918 (unpublished), pas-
sim. 80. Le Milieu Mystique, 1917 (unpublished),
passim. 81. Le Christique, 1955 (unpublished).
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