The Hominization Project

This past week I had a number of surprises: First I met on Thursday July 25 with Professor Dr. Michael Jewett , Professor of Surgery at the University of Toronto as he informed me that I am free of cancer according to the results of medical check tests that I recently underwent. He continues his medical clinical research assisted by researchers, physicians and staff. 

The second surprise was a sad one as I learned of the death of Georges Mahfouz, a most prominent engineer in France who was also a humble and committed Christian who participated in charitable work and attended Mass every day. But his heart was always the open encouraging and creative spirit. I knew Georges Mahfouz since 1978 in Egypt. He and his learned wife visited us in Toronto some 17 years ago when he had just retired. He suffered physically from cancer and other illnesses in the past 10 years. May God bless his soul.

The third surprise: On Friday I sought confession before attending Mass and receiving the Eucharist in thanksgiving to God who continues to give me the gift of life. At that point, I learned of the death of the charismatic Fr. Peter Mosteller who passed away about a year ago. It was a shock for me as he was my confessor and spiritual director for over 15 years. He served at St. Basil Roman Catholic Church where he gave electrifying homilies. He was a strong and humble person who, in spite of his age and illness continued to see me when I requested his advice. May God bless him in his eternal kingdom.

Having received the Eucharist another great surprise took place when I went on my way home to the barber. There I encountered Fr. Jim, the great pastor and preacher at St. Alphonse's Roman Catholic Church. My wife and I frequently attend Mass at St. Alphonse's Church only to hear him speak. 

The work of God continues in humanizing us and our civilizations. This is the "Hominization Project" of which Karl Rahner, S.J. and René Girard spoke.

Love is the means by which we become a true civilization and loving in the likeness of God. On a personal basis, the attainment of the Divine or the Divinization of Man is expounded by St. Athanasius in his writings on the Incarnation of the Son of God (You may wish to see this original translation  http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm). St Bernard's famous homily on the 4 loves is a deep reflection because in it love moves from the self to God. See it here:

http://todayquestions.blogspot.ca/2008/07/st-bernard-on-four-loves.html

I thank the Triune God for his continuing gifts of love, the Virgin Mary, and everyone who prays for me.

Thoughts of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

“Lord Christ, you who are divine energy and living irresistible might: since of the two of us it is you who are infinitely the stronger, it is you who must set me ablaze and transmute me into fire that we may be welded together and made one. Grant me, then, something even more precious than that grace for which all your faithful followers pray: to receive communion as I die is not sufficient: teach me to make a communion of death itself.” (Hymn of the Universe by Teilhard de Chardin, NY: Harper and Row 1965.)

I first learned about Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.  and his work in a retreat given by Henri Boulad, S.J. in 1972 in Cairo, Egypt.

Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) holds a special legacy in the Catholic Church. With his research as a paleontologist in China and his theological insight he sought to unify the scientific Theory of Evolution with the spiritual development of humans that in his view will culminate and be held together in the eschatological Cosmic Christ, The "Omega Point" of history (Cf. Revelation 22, 13). The Cosmic Christ is Jesus now in glory after his resurrection in which he brings humanity to the Father by the power of His Spirit. Teilhard's thought with regard to creation and the cosmos can be summarized in his two popular books "The Phenomenon of Man" and "Le Milieu Divin" in which he attempts to recapture and develop the interpretation of Genesis in allegorical and theological methods in the footsteps of St. Ambrose of Milan and St. Augustine of Hippo. But his mystical approach to creation can be summarized in his "Cosmic Liturgy of Creation." Because of suspicions by his superiors about a certain pantheistic thought in his ideas, Teilhard was forbidden to publish books until his death in 1955. In the Second Vatican Council, however, Michel Hakim observed that the spirit  of Teilhard seemed to "hover" over the optimistic deliberations and declarations that made an impact in the reform ushered by the Council.  The most distinct point of his thought is the complexification of matter into the biosphere which would be encompassed in the leap from the animal realm to the noosphere or human mind which, while still biologically animal, can ask himself about himself and raise questions about his origin and future. This is the step where Man starts to worship a divinity that, in his research, Marcea Eliade categorizes as the "Sky God." Revelation in the Judaic-Christian Tradition is a response by God to man's fearful questions that progressively reveal the merciful and faithful God. In Jesus Christ, God is fully revealed as eternal Love.

In his book "Introduction to Christianity" the young Joseph Ratzinger wrote in 1968 about Teilhard de Chardin as part of his excellent exposition on the Resurrection of Christ:
"We can start again from the dictum about love and death and say: Only where someone values love more highly than life, that is, only where someone is ready to put life second to love, for the sake of love, can love be stronger and more than death. If it is to be more than death, it must first be more than mere life. But if it could be this, not just in intention but in reality, then that would mean at the same time that the power of love had risen superior to the power of the merely biological and taken it into its service. To use Teilhard de Chardin's terminology; where that took place, the decisive complexity or "complexification" would have occurred; bios, too, would be encompassed by and incorporated in the power of love. It would cross the boundary--death--and create unity where death divides. If the power of love for another were so strong somewhere that it could keep alive not just his memory, the shadow of his "I", but that person himself, then a new stage in life would have been reached. This would mean that the realm of biological evolutions and mutations had been left behind and the leap made to a quite different plane, on which love was no longer subject to bios but made use of it. Such a final stage of "mutation" and "evolution" would itself no longer be a biological stage; it would signify the end of the sovereignty of bios, which is at the same time the sovereignty of death; it would open up the realm that the Greek Bible calls zoe, that is, definitive life, which has left behind the rule of death. The last stage of evolution needed by the world to reach its goal would then no longer be achieved within the realm of biology but by the spirit, by freedom, by love. It would no longer be evolution but decision and gift in one." The full exposition can be found here:
http://todayquestions.blogspot.ca/2012/04/joseph-ratzinger-truth-of-resurrection.html


In  "La Priere du Père Teilhard de Chardin" published in 1964, and translated to English under the title "The Faith of Teilhard de Chardin" in 1965,  Henri de Lubac, S.J. (major contributor to Vatican II, made cardinal in 1983) made the case for the authentic Christian thought of his friend Teilhard. "Omnia in ipso constant - 'in him all subsists' - This sentence from the Epistle to the Colossians had long fired Teilhard's enthusiasm...he said that ' Christ is the term supernaturally, but also physically, assigned to the consummation of humanity', nor again in saying that for St. Paul, 'all energies hold together, are welded deep down into a single whole, and what the humanity of our Lord does is to take them up again and re-weld them in a transcendent and personal unity.'"

Sweetest Jesus - The Prayer of Pope Francis at the World Youth Day

Today Pope Francis the Great has ended his journey to Brazil where for almost a week he attracted 3 million participants from the world, the largest crowd of youth ever in any World Youth Day event. Francis did not shy away from warning the youth against materialism that has invaded the world, but he said to them that the Church needs them for her future as missionaries of Christ. Last night we followed the vigil prayer live on EWTN in which he blessed the participants with the Blessed Sacrament lifting it in a rare moment of utter joy and calling the Lord: Sweetest Jesus, most lovable and the splendor of all....He asked the Lord to make Christians missionaries of his love and bless his Church with an ever-renewed faith.

This was a fleeting experience of joy for many people young and old. The question remains whether the People of God will indeed respond in committed lasting lives of love towards God and their fellow human beings who continue to suffer in many places as martyrs of injustice and violence; a phenomenon in the more materialist and individualist societies of advanced Western countries, and in current attempts of islamization by fundamentalist groups of whole regions especially in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and certain countries in Europe. The temptation is, as always, strong to fall into idolatry of the self, of possessive false pleasure (that the youth call luv), or of slavery to money and other creatures meant to open to us to the deep love of God for his creation but never worshiped in themselves. Prophets of the Old Covenant as well as saints of the Church have always warned us of the consequences we bring upon ourselves if we fall.

Catholic Bishops in Latin America made a point of reclaiming Catholics from excessive attractions by Pentecostal Christians and other Christian sects that infiltrated the hearts and minds of young Catholics through their methods of worship and promises of salvation. While the Catholic Church does not deny the salvific value in such Christian communities, she must remind the faithful that in her bosom alone exists the fullness of truth and grace as communicated through Apostolic succession in union with the Successor of St. Peter.

In a violent and fleeting temporal world, the Church must always be for the poor as Francis the Great reminded his listeners. Sweetest Jesus, save the world from the powers of hell.