I managed to climb up to the point

where the Universe became apparent to me

as a great rising surge,

in which all the work that goes into serious inquiry,

all the will to create, all the acceptance of suffering,

converge ahead into a single dazzling spear-head –

now, at the end of my life,

I can stand on the peak I have scaled and continue

to look ever more closely into the future,

and there, with ever more assurance,

see the ascent of God.

(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Heart of Matter)

A child, born in France in 1881, too early acquainted with death and loss. begins a lifelong search for something that will last. With the soul of a poet, with eyes drawing in the beauty of nature as he walks with his father through the hills surrounding their home in Auvergne, the young Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is drawn to rocks as things that would endure…. This early allurement leads him into a scientific career that takes him to China where he is today honoured as its founder of paleontology, part of the group that unearthed the earliest human remains in China, known as “Peking Man”.

Drawn to the Jesuit Order, Pierre is sent for his early theological training to Hastings in England. Here, he is enchanted by the natural beauty of the green land around him. Here by the sea, he discovers ancient cliffs bearing fossils that carry the story of evolution. Following his ordination to the priesthood in 1911, Pierre returns to the Jesuit community in Paris. His assignment is to study geology and to apply for acceptance as a student in paleontology under Marcellin Boule at the Paris Museum of Natural History. Boule, probably the greatest scholar in the field, recognizes Teilhard’s talents. As a scientist, Pierre is on his way to great achievements.

If Science were his only love, Pierre’s story would perhaps have been one of intense work accompanied by a steady rise in fame. Yet Pierre’s heart holds another deep desire, a love for the Risen Christ whom he glimpses at the heart of the earth’s beauty, as the living spirit in all that exists. Vowed as a Jesuit within a Church that still, in the early twentieth century, refuses to accept the reality of Evolution, that sees the path to God as an upward climb away from the material to the spiritual, seeking a God who must be found by rising above the Earth and Nature, Pierre is like to child torn between separating parents both of whom he loves. He is to spend his life seeking to draw Matter and Spirit together.

His studies in Science at the Institut Catholique in Paris prepare him to return there as a professor following the First World War, where he serves as a stretcher bearer. His writings increase, sharing his vision of a planet permeated by the Spirit of God. He writes of a Universe filled with the love of the Risen Christ. Yet he is forbidden by his Jesuit Superiors and by leaders of the Church in Rome to publish the book length manuscript that holds the heart of his vision: “The Human Phenomenon”. He is forbidden to teach. He is exiled from his beloved France to live in the Jesuit Community in New York City where he dies on Easter Sunday, 1955.

Not long before his death, Pierre writes: “How is it possible that descending from the mountain and despite the glory that I carry in my eyes, I am so little changed for the better, so lacking in peace, so incapable of passing on to others through my conduct, the marvelous unity in which I feel immersed?….

“As I look about me, how is it I find myself entirely alone of my kind?…

“Why am I the only one who sees?” (“Recherche, travail, et adoration,” New York, March 1955; cited in Teilhard: A Biography by Mary Lukas and Ellen Lukas, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1977, 1981)

Had that been his ending, Pierre’s story would have been a tragedy. It was not the end.

Pierre’s circle of loving friends, several of whom were women: intelligent, capable, gifted, understood his vision. When his health began to fail, on the advice of a Jesuit friend, Teilhard entrusted his writings to a woman friend, a skilled editor…. Shortly after his death, Teilhard’s books began to appear like an explosion of shooting stars.

Just weeks ago, the film Teilhard: Visionary and Scientist, was released on PBS and is now available world wide with this link: https://www.pbs.org/video/teilhard-visionary-scientist-pt9dc1/

Filmmakers Frank Frost and his wife Mary Link spent thirteen years in massive fundraising efforts, allowing them to travel to China, to France and across the US for interviews, research and filming. The result is a work of art: a visually splendid achievement in storytelling and film-making. It is a gift from the Universe, from Teilhard himself, who spent his life shaping and writing of the vision that we, in our time, so desperately need:

Throughout my whole life, during every moment I have lived, the world has gradually been taking on light and fire for me, until it has come to envelop me in one mass of luminosity, glowing from within…The purple flash of matter fading imperceptibly into the gold of spirit, to be lost finally in the incandescence of a personal universe….

This is what I have learnt from my contact with the earth –

the diaphany of the divine at the heart of a glowing universe,

the divine radiating from the depths of matter a-flame.

(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)