“Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mystical of cosmic forces. Love is the primal and universal psychic energy. Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.” The Spirit of the Earth, 1931, VI, 32, 33, 34
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. was a French Catholic priest and paleontologist whose commitment to both science and faith led to a spirituality and mysticism focused on the future of this earth as a divine milieu in which we discover God. He worked as a geologist in France and in China and was one of the discoverers of “Peking Man.”
Kathleen Duffy, S.S.J. explains that Teilhard says, “Mysticism is a science that requires a sixth sense, one that opens to a dimension of the world that is available to all, yet not easily accessed by many. To practice this science is to learn to discern more than that which the eye can see, the ear can hear, the nose can smell, the tongue can taste, and the skin can feel—more than what our best scientific instruments can detect.”
The world-zest,
The essence of all energy,
The cosmic curve,
The heart of God,
The issue of cosmogenesis,
The tide of cosmic convergence,
the God of evolution,
The Universal Jesus,
Focus of ultimate and Universal energy,
Center of the cosmic sphere of cosmogenesis,
Heart of Jesus,
Heart of evolution,
Unite me to yourself
Teilhard wrote this personal prayer on the back of a holy card of the Sacred Heart, which he carried with him for use everywhere he went. The image of Jesus on that card (pictured above) is not the traditional picture of a blood-red physical heart, but rather a softly glowing heart radiating white light in and from the Cosmic Christ.
He writes, in A Note on Progress, “…everything is the sum of the past” and “…nothing is comprehensible except through its history. ‘Nature’ is the equivalent of ‘becoming’, self-creation: this is the view to which experience irresistibly leads us. … There is nothing, not even the human soul, the highest spiritual manifestation we know of, that does not come within this universal law.”
A PBS film tells of Teilhard’s life including suppression by his Jesuit order for advocating evolution, a path that offered him “personal awakening, a search for meaning, scientific adventure, unresolved conflict with authority, and human love.” Because his writings were not allowed to be published until after his death in 1955, he is more famous after his death than during his life.
A comprehensive list of writings by Teilhard includes works that show how humans’ spiritual life can become a participation in the destiny of the universe. This list of writings on Teilhard or related to his teachings is vast.
mystical friend 