CHRIST’S PRESENCE IN THE WORLD. THE PRAYERS OF PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN. Agustín Udías, S. J. ABSTRACT Among some of Teilhard de Chardin’s writing there are explicit prayers in which he addresses himself to God and Christ. These prayers show the most intimate expression of his spirituality. They can be followed from the first in 1916 during his participation in the first world war to the last shortly before his death. We can distinguish two types of prayers, those found in his journal and the notes in his retreats, that are written for himself and those contained in his essays and are intended for the public. Among them Teilhard’s best known prayer is “The Mass on the World” where he expresses the presence of Christ in the world by his incarnation and its sacramental extension in the Eucharist. Teilhard’s prayers allow us to get access to his interiority and his relation to the Cosmic or Universal Christ who was the center of his life. INTRODUCTION The writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin contain a profound Christian message with strong mystical character that acquire its most intimate expression in the prayers that are included in some of his essays, his journal and retreat notes. In them Teilhard addresses himself directly to God and Christ using this name that of Jesus or those of “Lord” or “my God”. In these prayers we can find the deepest expression of his interiority and are the expression of his spirituality. Teilhard’s religious thought has been the object of a high number of studies, for example, those already classic of Georges Crespy (1961), Henri de Lubac (1962) and Christopher F. Mooney (1966) and the most recent of Édith de la Héronnière (1999) and Gustave Martelet (2005). About his prayers we have the 1 also classic and essential work by du Lubac (1964) and the more recent by André Dupleix (1994). As a Jesuit priest and a dedicated scientist in the fields of geology and paleontology, Teilhard’s main concern was always how to integrate the Christian message with the new evolutionary world view presented by science. This concern is already present in his first essays written during his participation in the First World War and will continue until the last pages written only days before his death. This main problem stems from the two pillars that support his life, his scientific work and his mystical experience. For Teilhard the new evolutionary world view, that he has assimilated in his passionate dedication to science, first in his studies of geology and paleontology and later in his research work in the same fields especially about human fossils, affected profoundly his religious and Christian conception of the relation of God with the world and the role played by Christ. Teilhard in his writings presents a Christian interpretation of world evolution that finally progresses toward a unification and convergence in the Omega Point which he identifies with the Christ of faith. Thus the whole universe progresses from its initial stages of multiplicity to a final unity at human level in a convergent process that reaches its final unity which Christian faith recognize as its unity in Christ. Christ is then the Omega Point that attracts toward himself everything toward the consummation through human progress to the final unity that constitutes that of the whole universe. In this interpretation the cosmogenesis of the evolutionary process becomes for Teilhard what he calls a “Christogenesis”, identifying the pole of convergence of the whole cosmic evolution with the incarnated Christ. The final unity of men and through them of the whole universe in Christ constitutes what he calls the “Cosmic Christ” or the “Total” or “Universal Christ”. In this way, the cosmic process is identified with that of the formation of Universal Christ. This central position of Christ 2 in the cosmic evolution is the foundation of Teilhard’s Christian vision of evolution and the center of his Christology and the core of his spirituality and mystique (Udías, 2009). These ideas are present in Teilhard’s prayers. The main theme in them is God’s presence in the world in Christ. First of all, Christ is present in the world by its creation itself according to St. Paul and St. John’s Gospel and by his incarnation in which he unites not only with man but with the whole material universe. This presence will find its final achievement in the Parousia at the end of times. The universe and matter itself are constantly present in Teilhard’s prayers considered as part of the cosmic body of Christ. Thus he can talk of the “Cosmic Christ”, the “universal Christ” the “Christ always greater” that incorporates all the evolutionary process through men’s effort and suffering. An important aspect of Teilhard’s prayer is also its sacramental one, in which he sees the Eucharistic consecration extended to all the universe. Here I am not trying to make a study about Telhard’s spirituality, but simply to present parts of some of his explicit prayers with short introductions and let them bring us closer to his spirituality and mystique centered on the figure of Christ present in the world. They are presented in chronological order from the firsts in 1915 to the last in 1955, the year of his death. We can distinguish two types of prayers, those found in his journal and the notes in his retreats, that are written for himself and those contained in his essays and are intended for the public. In general the first are short and spontaneous prayers reflecting his interior situation, while the second are sometimes very long in which his thought is expressed in the form of a prayer. This is a short version of my book in Spanish where all the explicit prayers are given in its full extend (Udías, 2017). 3 THE FIRST PRAYERS IN WAR TIME The first prayers which have been preserved belonged to the period when Teilhard is at the front in the First World War, where he was incorporated as a stretcher-bearer on January 1915. The time of war was very important for the development of his thought and mystique. In 1917 in a letter to Fr. Victor Fontoynont he wrote: “These thirty years of solitary thinking in an atmosphere of great events they have been for me like a long retreat. I have become at the same time very realistic and very mystic”. In 1915 in a letter to his cousin Marguerite Teillard-Chambon, Teilhard wrote an exhortation which not being an explicit prayer has become one. He recommend her to keep an attitude of worship and confidence in God in all circumstances. We will find this attitude present in other prayers. When you feel sad and paralyzed, adore and trust. Adore offering to God your existence […] Trust, lose yourself blindly in Our Lord who wants to make you worthy of Him and He will arrive always, although you remain in darkness to the end and while you hold His hand, especially when blocked you are more disappointed, more saddened. (Genèse, 84) Teilhard is preoccupied with his behavior with the soldiers of his regiment and feels the difficulty to maintain always a warm friendly attitude. Thus he prays: Jesus, from now on my life must be pleasing to you and attract those near me: “receive-give- smile”. Receive your Will, give my heart, my gifts, my time. Try to be always loving and friendly. With time these attitudes become more difficult, faced with my men with whom I become tired and they with me. (Journal, 24) 4 Confidence in God is expressed in another prayer as being placed into His hands Into your hands, Lord, so tender, so powerful, so active to the marrow of my being… ; into your hands which have blessed, broken the bread, caressed the children, driven out the merchants …into your hands which are not like ours that do not know whether to be tender or do harm those they touch… into those hands, as I see my destiny darker and more rooted out from the past, the more I throw and hand over myself. (Journal, 150-151) THE COSMIC LIFE (1916) During the war time Teilhard wrote twenty essays, the first, «The cosmic life », finished on 1916 at the front in Belgium. This essay contains two long prayers. In the dedicatory he wrote: “To the Mother Earth and through her, mainly to Christ Jesus” and in the introduction: “I write these lines […] to express a passionate vision of the Earth and to search a solution to the doubts of my activity, because I love the Universe, its energies, its secrets, its hopes and because at the same time I am devoted to God, the only Origin, the only End”. Here is already the key for all his work showing the two poles of his life: the Universe or the Earth and God present in Jesus and through him in the world. The first prayer, is in chapter three, “Comunion with God” and begins, Oh yes, Jesus, I believe it, and I want to shout it from the roofs and at the public squares: You are not only the exterior Master of things and the incommunicable splendor of the Universe. Above all this, You are the dominating Influence that penetrate and hold us, that attract us through the marrow of our desires, the most dominant, the deepest. You are the cosmic Being that surrounds us and 5 completes us in the perfection of its unit. This is so, and for this reason, I love you above all! (La Vie cosmique. Oeuvres 12, 60) The second prayer is at the end of the essay in the chapter “The communion with God through the Earth”. The final paragraphs are: s I love you [Jesus] as the Fountain, the active and life giving Medium, the Conclusion and End also natural and of its Becoming. Center where everything meets again and that extends on all things to bring them again toward itself: I love you because of the extension of your Body and Soul in the whole creation by Grace, Life and Matter. Jesus, sweet like a Heart, burning like a Force, intimate like a Life. Jesus in whom I can be merged and can free myself, I love you like a World, like the World which has seduced me, and that it is yourself. Jesus, center toward which everything moves, deign to make to all of us, if this is possible, a small place among the elected and holy monads which broken off, by your solicitude, one by one from the present chaos, are grouped slowly in You, in the unity of the new Earth. (La Vie cosmique. Oeuvres 12, 81) THE MYSTICAL MILIEU (1917) Teilhard’s second essay “The mystical Milieu” is centered in the ideas which form already the core of his spirituality. For him mystique is an innate quality present in all men which creates “an overwhelming emotive aureole by which we discover in every contact the only Essential of the Universe”. Mystical experience has then strong natural roots and it includes an awareness of the entire universe. The essay is divided into five 6 consecutive “circles” which Teilhard calls the circles of presence, consistency, energy, spirit, and person. The first prayer is found in the circle of consistence. In this circle Teilhard considers the fundamental mystical intuition as that of finding a diffused unity in the plural immensity of the world and the joy of finally finding a solid and universal object on which we can base ourselves above the fragmentary joys of which “the successive and brief possession irritates without satisfying our heart”. In this prayer Teilhard addresses to the temptation of remaining at the natural level and points to the trials that can liberate us from this. Up to this point, Lord, my approach toward your gifts has been that of a man who, although he does not feel alone, seeks in darkness to find out which influence weighs more. Now, that I have discovered the transparent Consistency that embrace all of us, the mystical effort to see must make place, I understand it, for the effort of feeling and delivery. This is the phase of Communion. […] I want, Lord, for better embrace you that my conscience becomes as great as the heavens, the earth and the nations; as profound as the past, the desert and the ocean; so subtle as the atoms of matter and the thoughts of human heart. […] You, Lord, in order that the Spirit shine always in me, that I do not succumb to temptation that stalks in every audacity, that I never forget that you alone must be searched for, you send me, at the time that you know, privation, deception and pain, so that the object of my love will decline or I will let it go. (Le Milieu mystique. Oeuvres 12, 168) The last circle of “The mystical milieu” is the circle of the person. In this circle the “milieu” takes a human and divine form. It becomes a “mysterious entity” which is 7 in part something that belong to us, but that notwithstanding is above all and dominates all with his Absoluteness. This entity has a name and a face, that of Jesus. For Teilhard the universe can only be understood as a universe in which God has become incarnated in Jesus, that is, a universe to which God has united. The universe is in this form a personal universe. Thus Teilhard begins his prayer saying: With all beings that surrounds me, I feel myself captured by a superior Movement that embraces all the elements of the Universe and groups them in a new order. When I was given to see in what direction and where all the dazzling wake of the individual beauties and partial harmonies tend, I realize that all that comes to be centered in a unique point and a unique person, yours, Jesus! (Le Milieu mystique. Oeuvres 12, 189) The essay ends with a long prayer where Teilhard sees Jesus present in everything. He adds to this universal presence that of the sacramental mystery of the Eucharist that for him extends to the whole world. He ends the prayer recognizing the impossibility of explaining the true meaning of his union with Christ which includes everything that exists in the universe and that belongs really to the domain of the mystique. When I think about You, Lord, I cannot say whether I find you here or there, whether You are for me a Friend, a Force, or Matter itself, whether I contemplate or suffer, repent or become one with you; whether I love You or rather love the other, the rest… All attachment, all desire, all possession, all light, depth and harmony and all zeal shine equally in the same instant when the inexplicable relation is established between You and I ¡Jesus! (Le Milieu mystique. Oeuvres 12, 189) . THE PRIEST (1918) 8 In May 26, 1918, Teilhard made his final religious vows in the Jesuit novitiate at Lyon. After he returned to the front he wrote “The priest”, an essay about what meant for him his priesthood: He had been ordained priest on August 24, 1911 at Ore Place, Hastings (England), where he had studied theology. For Teilhard priesthood was mainly linked with the Eucharistic consecration. The everyday celebration of the Mass constituted from that day on for him the center of his life. In this essay he presents his reflections on the priesthood and the celebration of the Eucharist, that foretells those contained in his well known prayer “The Mass on the World”, and where he connects already the consecration of the Eucharist with that of the whole world. The essay is divided into four parts: Consecration, Adoration, Communion and Apostolate. Teilhard extends the power received in his priesthood to consecrate the bread and wine to the consecration of the whole universe. The essay contains several prayers about this idea. The first in the Consecration part begins acknowledging that often in the front he has no possibility to celebrate Mass. Since today, Lord, I, your priest, do not have bread, wine or altar; I will extend my hands over the totality of the Universe and take its immensity as the matter of my sacrifice. The ensemble of things, is it not the ultimate Host you want to transform? The burning crucible furnace, where the activities of all living and cosmic substances are mixed and agitated, is it not the agonizing chalice you want to santify? […] Take in your hands, Lord, and bless this Universe destined to feed and complete the plenitude of your being among us! Prepare it for its union with you! Strengthen for this the attraction that come down from your Heart over our dust! (Le Prêtre. Oeuvres 12, 313, 316) 9 Once consecration has been accomplished, where the bread symbolizes the active forces of creation and the wine the losses and pain that accompanies all human effort, Teilhard proceeds to the “Adoration” , where he adds the following prayer, I kneel, Lord, before the Universe, which has secretly become, under the influence of the Host, into your adorable Body and your divine Blood. I bow myself in its presence, or better I take refuge in it. The World is full of You! Oh Universal-Christ, true foundation of the World, who finds your consummation in the union of everything that your power has made emerge from nothingness, I worship you and submerge myself into the conscience of your plenitude universally extended. (Le Prêtre. Oeuvres 12, 318) In the third part, «Communion”, Teilhard acknowledge that in the Eucharistic communion, although apparently it is he who receives the bread, in reality, on the contrary it is Jesus who receives him: “If I thought that was I who took the consecrated Bread …, on the contrary it was Him who takes and attract me toward Himself” and in this process enters the entire universe. Thus he says: “To the universal consecration follows a universal communion” and adds: “The little inert host has become to my eyes as large as the world, so consuming as a fire”. Lord, I do not know how to surrender to such great power and I give myself to it with joy. […] In order that you, my God, own me, you who is farther than All and deeper than All, you who takes me and unites the immensity of the World and the intimacy of myself. […] Because I have become, thanks to my agreement in a living portion of the Body of Christ, everything that influence on me acts finally on me to develop Christ. Christ invades me and my Cosmos. (Le Prêtre. Oeuvres 12, 324) 10 The fourth part «Apostolate», contains several prayers, where Teilhard presents what he considers to be his vocation to bring to other his message and his “gospel” about the presence of Christ in the world. I would like to be, Lord, on my humble part the apostle and (if I may dare to say it) the evangelist of your Christ in the Universe. I would like to discover and preach by my meditations, words and practice of my whole life, the relations of continuity that makes the Cosmos a milieu divinized by your Incarnation, which divinize by Communion and becomes divine by our cooperation (Le Prêtre. Oeuvres 12, 329) THE MASS ON THE WORLD (1923) This long text is without doubt Teilhard’s best known prayer. In a more elaborated form it concentrates many of the ideas already expressed in his previous prayers: the presence of Christ in the world by his incarnation and its sacramental extension in the Eucharist which for him is a consecration of the whole creation. In the same way as in war time in the front, now in his geological field work in the Asian steppes, often he has no opportunity to celebrate Mass so he celebrates this “mental Mass”. In a letter to Henri Breuil (26 August 1923), Teilhard mentions the elaboration of this prayer: “ I develop always praying, little by little, but each time better my “Mass on things”. I think that in a certain sense, the true substance to consecrate is the development of the world – bread symbolizing what creation is producing, wine (blood) what is lost in the exhaustion and suffering of the effort (Lettres-V, 46).The prayer is divided following the Catholic Mass into five parts: Offering, Fire on the World, Fire in the World, Communion, and Prayer. He distinguishes Christ’s presence in the world by 11 creation (Fire on the World) from his presence by Incarnation and Eucharist (Fire in the World). The first part is “the offering”, which corresponds the offertory of the Mass . The bread and wine of the Eucharistic offertory represent now: the bread everything that is positive in the effort to make grow and advance human progress, the wine symbolizes the negative part of exhaustion and suffering that accompanies this effort. Especially Teilhard has in mind the work of those who advance scienti8c progress for the good of humanity. He begins his prayer in this way Once again, Lord, not in the woods of Aisne, but in the steppes of Asia, I have neither bread, nor wine, nor an altar. I will raise myself above the symbols to the pure majesty of the Real and I, your priest, will offer you on the altar of the entire Earth the work and suffering of the World. […] My chalice and my patent are the depths of a soul opened to all forces that will be raised from all points of the Globe and converge to the Spirit. […] Receive, Lord, this all-embracing Host that Creation, transformed by your attraction, present to you in the dawn of a new day.This bread, our effort, is in itself, I know it, an immense disaggregation. This wine, our suffering, is still a dissolving drink… (La Messe sur le Monde, Oeuvres 13, 141) After considering the presence of the Divine Logos (Fire) in the world by His creative action Teilhard proceeds to consider His active presence by the Incarnation. So he can say: “All matter is now incarnated matter” and “You has been incarnated in the world”. Fire, once again has penetrated the Earth. […] Without shock or thunder, the Flame has illuminated all from within. From the nucleus of the least of the atoms 12 to the energy of the most universal laws. It has illuminated each element, each connection of our Cosmos. […] And, however, mysteriously and in reality, to the contact of the substantial Word, the Universe, immense Host, has become Flesh. All matter from now on, is incarnated, my God, by your Incarnation. […] Now, Lord, by the consecration of the World, the glow and perfume which float on the Universe acquire a body and a face in You. (La Messe sur le Monde, Oeuvres 13, 145) In the communion the bread and wine of the Eucharistic consecration, symbols of the human effort and suffering, must be received in union with the world. However, communion is not only a participation in the positive and negative of the world, but through them, in which the Lord himself is present, means mainly to be possessed by Christ. Without hesitating, first of all, I will extend my hand to the burning bread which you offer me. This bread in which you have enclosed in germ all development. To take it is to surrender myself to the potencies that will tear me up from myself. […] How could I refuse this chalice, Lord, now that by the bread you has made me to taste, the inextinguishable passion of being united with you has penetrated the marrow of my being. I hopelessly abandon myself, my God, to the actions of dissolution. (La Messe sur le Monde, Oeuvres 13, 150) “The Mass on the World” ends with a beautiful prayer to Jesus, where we can find a summary of the ideas already presented. In this prayer Jesus appears as the glorious Christ, center of the universe, and Teilhard asks to be united to Him in the deepest of his heart through all the energies and powers of the world. 13 “Lord”, at last, by the double mystery of the universal consecration and communion, I have found one to whom I can with all my heart give this name. Meanwhile, I did not dare to see in You, Jesus, anything more that the man of two thousand years ago, sublime Moralist, the Friend, the Bother, my love remained shy and embarrassing. Friends, brothers, sages, do not have we them among us, great, chosen and nearest? […] But today, when by the manifestation of the superhuman powers that your resurrection has given you becomes for me transparent, Teacher, I recognize you through all the powers of the Earth as my sovereign and I deliver myself delightfully to you. […] Glorious Christ, Influence secretly diffused in the boson of Matter and blinding center where all numberless fibers of the Multiple are united, unyielding Power as the World and burning as Life […] You who are the first and the last, the living, the dead and resurrected; You who joins in your exuberant unity all attractions, all forces, all beings; it is to you that my whole being calls with a desire as great as the Universe. You are truly my Lord and my God! […] To your Body in all its extension, that is, to the world transformed by your power and my faith in the magnificent and living crucible furnace where all disappear to be born again, […] I consecrate myself, Jesus, to live and die. (La Messe sur le Monde, Oeuvres 13, 154, 156) THE DIVINE MILIEU (1926-27) Teilhard considered this book, the most complete presentation of his spirituality, to be so personal that he wrote to Eduard Le Roy: “The divine milieu” is exactly myself” 14 (Lettres-R, 131) and «I have put so much of myself in these pages that I would prefer they were posthumous” (Lettres-R, 107). In a note previous to the text he expresses that he is writing for those who “understand above all the voice of the Earth” and that he wants to show them that Christ is still “the first” in humanity. Several long prayers are included in this book where Teilhard addresses himself directly to Christ and in them he summarizes the ideas presented in the text that have preceded them. The first prayer is in the part entitled “The divinization of activities”. With the word activities he refers to all the positive that we achieve by our effort. Lord, I am sure that by virtue of a pretension which yourself has put in the center of my will, the work itself of our spirit and our hands, our achieved results and projects will be in some form made eternal. […] Show to all your faithful, Lord, how in a real and full sense, their works will follow them in your Kingdom (Le milieu divin, Oeuvres 4, 40, 41) To the divinization of the activities follows that of the pasivities of decrease. With this words Teilhard refers to all the negative that takes place in our lives, pain and suffering included. In them he sees also God’s hand which through them make us grow. This is the subject of the following prayer. After I have discovered the joy of using all growth to work or to let myself grow in You, I come without consternation to this last phase of communion, after which I will possess you decreasing myself in You. […] Oh Energy of my Lord, irresistible and living Force, because between the two of us you are the infinitely stronger, it is to You, that belong to burning me in the union which must melt us together. Give me, then, something still more precious: the grace that all your 15 faithful pray for. This is not that I die in communion. Teach me to commune in dying. (Le milieu divin, Oeuvres 4, 95-96) In the third part, Teilhard decribes the attributes and nature of “the divine milieu” itself. In this term we can find the core of his spirituality centered in the presence of Christ in the world where all reality is united. This presence, in which everything becomes one from “the most intimate of the soul to the consistent of matter”, takes place in Christ through three levels. The first is creation: Christ is the creator Logos that has made everything and in which everything has their consistency, as expressed by Saint Paul. In Christ is achieved the “sublime unity of God as the center of the Universe”. The second is Incarnation by which the divined immensity is realized in the “omnipresence of Christification”, in which the net of all organizer forces of the Universe integrates in the “Total Christ”. The third: this presence of the Universal Christ becomes sacramental in the Eucharist where the whole universe is consecrated. […] Oh, to adore, that is, to lose oneself in the unfathomable, to submerge in the inexhaustible, to be pacified in the incorruptible, to be absolved in the defined immensity, to be opened to the Fire and Transparency, to be stun consciously and voluntary so far as one takes conscience of oneself; Give oneself in depth to the depthless! What could we adore? […] ¡Oh Jesus, tear the clouds of your splendor! Show yourself as the Strong, the Radiant, the Risen! Be for us the Pantocrator, present in the full solitude of the domes of the old basilicas! Nothing is necessary but this Parusia to balance and master in our hearts the glory of the emerging World. So that we can overcome with you the World, show yourself to us surrounded of the glory of the World. 16 […] Oh, yes, Lord, not only the lightning that touch, but the lightning that penetrates. Not your Epiphany, Jesus, but your Diaphany . (Le milieu divin, Oeuvres 4, 154, 158) The book ends with a long prayer in which the two last paragraphs are a true cry of hope and surrender to the omnipotent and saving power of Christ. I have already shout it at every moment, Jesus, do not be for me only a brother, but a God! Now, coated with the formidable power of selection which is placed at the Summit of the World as the universal principle of attraction and repulsion, You truly appear as the immense and living Force that I search everywhere to be able to adore. (Le milieu divin, Oeuvres 4, 191) THE HEART OF MATTER (1950) In this essay, which is some sort of a spiritual autobiography, Teilhard summarizes in a personal way the main lines of his thought. As he expresses it, he wants “simply to show how beginning from an initial ignition point, the World along my life has been little by little illuminated, inflamed in front of my eyes to become around me inward luminous”. The last part is dedicated to the Christ’s presence in the world which has become a Christified world. At the end Teilhard puts a prayer with the title “Prayer to the ever-greater Christ”. We can consider this prayer as the one with which Teilhard wants close his life, end that he senses to be near. Lord, since always in all senses and through all the opportunities of my life I have never ceased of searching you in the heart of the universal Matter, I will have the joy of closing my eyes in the glare of a universal Transparency and Glow… […] All this, in a Universe discovered to me in a state of convergence, 17 you have taken, by right of your Resurrection, the dominating place of the total Center where everything is united. […] As each year passes, Lord, I think I recognize better in me and around me that the great and secret concern of modern man is less to dispute the possession of the World, but to find the way to escape from it […] Lord of Consistency and Union, You whose sign of recognition and essence is to grow indefinitely, with neither deformation nor rupture, in the mysterious Matter, where you occupy the Heart and control all its movements as the ultimate cause – Lord of my infancy and Lord of my end – […] Let by the Diaphany and Fire together flare up your universal presence. Oh ever-greater Christ! (Le Coeur de la Matière, Oeuvres 13, 67, 70) TO FINISH WELL In the last years, Teilhard’s main concern was to finish well his life. He wrote to Henri de Lubac: «This is the time to trust in Him for whom alone I have made everything which I have made. It is not easy to live so uncertain about the future. You know it probably better than I. Pray for me that I “finished well” in conformity with what I have tried to preach. This is, I believe, the grace of graces” (Lettres-I, 374-375). In this sense he wrote in his spiritual exercise notes, «Jesus, once again, hold me before I will waste anything for You – grant me that the cycle of my life must be well completed. And while it last, help me to accomplish the perception and expression of my vision, - my vision of your secret and universal essence, Golden Glow. […] More than ever, the Christ-Omega is the one that lights up and direct my life (Notes, 291) 18 My God, Jesus, once again the same prayer, the most ardent and humble. “To finish well”, that is in full faith with the Cosmos and the Christ-Omega. “To finish well”, that is, having had the time and opportunity to formulate my Essential Message, the essence of my Message (Notes 300). In 1948 in a letter to Jeanne Mortier, Teilhard made clear what was the most important thing in his life: “I ask myself many times whether in the last phase of my life, more than the research about the fossil man, more than the speculations about the Noosphere, it is the simple practice of the total Love to the Universal Christ that will be asked from me in the last moment” (Lettres-JM, 38). EPILOGUE At the end of his essay “The Christic” finished in March 1955, only a few days before his death, Teilhard expressed his perplexity about the fact that he only has been able to find the insights of his thought, especially regarding Christ’s presence in the world that we have seen in his prayers. ¿How is it, that looking around me, still dazzled by everything that has appeared to me, I find myself almost alone in having seen? I am unable to cite a single author, a single text where one can find clearly explained the marvelous “Diaphany”, which for me has transfigured everything. The Universal Christ? The Divine milieu? After all, would I not be the plaything of an interior mirage? […] But not, it is sufficient for truth to appear only once in one spirit alone, so that nothing could never prevent it to invade and inflame everything. (Le Cristique, Oeuvres 13, 115, 117). 19 Today, sixty three years later, we can be sure that Teilhard was right, his message, his spirituality and his mystique are alive and worldwide spread. His vision of Christ’s presence in an evolving world which has been made known to us through science keeps as he said it, “invading and inflaming everything”. The mistrust and suspicion to his ideas by ecclesiastic authorities has little by little yield. Thus we see that is coming about what he so much desired a Church more active listening to the needs of modern man. To all who are attracted by Teilhard’s ideas his prayers would let them get access to his interiority and his relation to the Cosmic or Universal Christ who was the center of his life. In a world fascinated by the continuous progress of science and technology, his prayers show that besides being a passionate scientist, a great thinker and a visionary of the future of mankind (he called himself a “pilgrim of the future”), he was above all a great Christian mystic, a man of prayer. He wanted to transmit to other his vision of the presence of Christ in the world or in his words a “Christified World” or a “Universal Christ”. As Gustave Martelet calls him, Teilhard was a “prophet of the ever greater Christ” present in the world. Bibliography Crespy, G. (1961). La pensée théologique de Teilhard de Chardin. Paris: Editions Universitaires. De Lubac, H. (1962). La pensée religieuse du Père Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Paris: Aubier; De Lubac, H. (1964). La prière du Père Teilhard de Chardin. Paris : Fayard Dupleix, A. (1994). Prier 15 jours avec Teilhard de Chardin, Paris : Nouvelle Cité Héronnière, E. de la (2003). Teilhard de Chardin, une mystique de la traversée. París : Albin Michel ; 20 Martelet, G. (2005). Teilhard de Chardin, prophète d’un Christ toujours plus grande. Bruselas : Lessius. Mooney, C. F. (1968). Teilhard de Chardin and the mystery of Christ. Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday-Image, Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, (1955-1976). Oeuvres, vols 1-13. París: Éditions du Seuil. (Oeuvres) Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, (1956). Lettres de voyage (1923-1955) París: Bernard Grasset. (Lettres-V) Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1961). Genèse d’une pensée. Lettres (1914-1919). París: Bernard Grasset. (Genèse) Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, (1965). Lettres à Léontine Zanta. París: Desclée de Brouwer, (Lettres-Z) Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1975). Journal (26 août 1915 – 4 Janvier 1919). París: Arthème Fayard. (Journal) Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1975). Lettres intimes a Augusto Valensin, Bruno de Solage, Henri de Lubac, André Ravier (1919-1955). Paris: Aubier Montaigne. (LettresI) Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1984). Lettres à Jeanne Mortier. Paris: Seuil (Lettres-JM) Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (2003). Notes de retraites (1919-1954). Paris: Èditions du Seuil. (Notes) Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (2008). Lettres à Édouard Le Roy (1921-1946). Maturation d’une pensé. París: Facultés Jésuites de Paris. (Lettres-R) Udías, A. (2009). Christogenesis: The Development of Teilhard’s Cosmic Christology. Teilhard Studies 59, American Teilhard Association. Udías, A. (2017). La presencia de Cristo en el mundo. Las oraciones de Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Santander: Sal Terrae 21