Pierre Teilhard de Chardin- On Patience in Spiritual Growth
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We would like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability-
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually- let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time-
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense, and incomplete.
Famous Quotes by Teilhard de Chardin
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Let man live at a distance from God, and the universe remains neutral or hostile to him. But let man believe in God, and immediately all around him the elements, even the irksome, of the inevitable organize themselves into a friendly whole, ordered to the ultimate success of life. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
In each soul, God loves and partly saves the whole world which that soul sums up in an incommunicable and particular way. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Humanity has been sleeping-and still sleeps-lulled within the narrowly confining joys of its little closed loves. In the depths of the human multitude there slumbers an immense spiritual power which will manifest itself only when we have learnt how to break through the dividing walls of our egoism and raise ourselves up to an entirely new perspective, so that habitually and in a practical fashion we fix our gaze on the universal realities. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Today, something is happening to the whole structure of human consciousness. A fresh kind of life is starting. Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world are seeking each other, so that the world may come into being. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a renowned French philosopher, paleontologist and geologist famous for his unique theory of evolution of man. He was born in 1881 in Orcines, France, and died in1955 at age 73.
His theory of evolution threw light on a social perspective which stated that man was evolving mentally and socially towards a spiritual unity. Brian Swimme wrote “Teilhard was one of the first scientists to realize that the human and the universe are inseparable. The only universe we know about is a universe that brought forth the human.”
He was known to possess a high intellect in various fields including spirituality and science.
Teilhard has had a profound influence on the New Age movement and has been described as “perhaps the man most responsible for the spiritualization of evolution in a global and cosmic context”.
Teilhard’s quote on likening the discovery of the power of love to the second time man will have discovered the power of fire was quoted in the sermon of the Most Reverend Michael Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, during the wedding of Prince Harry
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