The New Samaritans

The New Samaritans

So far we have seen how Teilhard uses the biblical revelation about the Body of Christ to put the process of planetization in a different light, personalizing or "amorizing" it. This is reminiscent of the words of Jesus: "as you did it to one of the least of my brothers, you did it to me". (Matthew 25:40)  Teilhard likes to use the parable of the good Samaritan to further develop this theme:

The charity of the gospels has long been identified with that of the good Samaritan, who picks up the victim, bandages him, and gives him such solace as he can. Surely there must be some way of giving this great virtue an even more generous and more active form?… Love of neighbor would wither were it to lose that flower of compassion from which sprang the rich harvest of the Hospitallers and the nursing orders; but it needs to give itself a more solid structure in some passionate attachment to the collective work of the universe. We have not only to ease but to develop; not only to repair but to build. For our generation, love of mankind can have but one meaning, to devote oneself with all one’s energies and all one’s heart to man’s effort.[1]

'Love one another.’ Is that essentially Christian disposition limited to easing, individually, the sufferings of our fellow-men? Or does it not, rather, need to be developed in active sympathy with the great human body, in such a way as not merely to bind up its wounds but to embrace its anxieties, its hopes, all the structural growth that creation still looks for in it?[2]

Charity does more than call on us to bind up wounds: it urges us to build a better world here below, and to be in the forefront of every attack launched to forward the growth of mankind.[3]

Our Daily Work

Teilhard is trying help those who are unable to see the Christian value of "worldly" activities. Anything we do is of some benefit to someone as part of the world economy, even if we do not see the immediate benefit, and as a result, "a little more health is being spread in the human mass, and in consequence a little more liberty to act, to think and to love."[4] This apples to all occupations, as seen in the following paragraphs, and further below are some comments for those who shared in Teilhard's scientific vocation, and finally some words dealing with artists, a calling far removed from his. 

Every process of material growth in the universe is ultimately directed toward spirit, and every process of spiritual growth toward Christ. From this it follows that whether the work to which I am tied by the circumstances of the present moment be commonplace or sublime, tedious or enthralling, I have the happiness of being able to think that Christ is waiting to receive its fruit: and that fruit, we must remember, is not only the intention behind my action but also the tangible result of my work… If this hope is justified, the Christian must be active, and busily active, working as earnestly as the most convinced of those who work to build up the Earth, that Christ may continually be born more fully in the world around him.[5]

The knitting together of God and the world has just taken place under our eyes in the domain of action. No, God does not deflect our gaze prematurely from the work he himself has given us, since he presents himself to us as attainable through that very work. Nor does he blot out, in his intense light, the detail of our worldly aims, since the closeness of our union with him is in fact determined by the exact fulfillment of the least of our tasks... God, in all that is most living and incarnate in him, is not far away from us, altogether apart from the world we see, touch, hear, smell and taste about us. Rather he awaits us every instant in our action, in the work of the moment. There is a sense in which he is at the tip of my pen, my spade, my brush, my needle- of my heart and of my thought.[6]

Try, with God's help, to perceive the connection- even physical and natural- which binds your labor with the building of the kingdom of heaven; try to realize that heaven itself smiles upon you and, through your works, draws you to itself; then, as you leave church for the noisy streets, you will remain with only one feeling, that of continuing to immerse yourself in God.[7]

Science

The Christian scientist seems to everyone the best situated and the best prepared to develop in himself and foster around him the new human type seemingly awaited at present for the further advancement of the earth: the seeker who devotes himself, ultimately through love, to the labors of discovery.[8]

The time has now come to master nature, to make it unlock its secrets, to dominate it, to inaugurate a new phase; in that phase intelligence, which emerged from the universe, will turn back in it, to readjust and rejuvenate it, and make it provide its conscious portion with the full contribution it can make of growth in joy and activity... [the scientist] can envisage a new era in which suffering is effectively alleviated, well-being assured, and- who knows?- our organs are perhaps rejuvenated and even artificially developed. It is dangerous to challenge science and set a limit to its victories...[9]

Art

Art serves to give the over-plus of life, which boils up in us... A feeling may be vivid, but it still lacks something, or cannot be communicated to others, unless it is expressed in a significant act, in a dance, a song, a cry. It is art that provides this song or cry for the anxieties, the hopes, and the enthusiasms of man. It gives them a body, and in some way materializes them... The artist, I imagine, would be wrong, and indeed has often gone astray, in trying painfully to introduce a thesis or doctrine into his work. In his case, it is intuition and not reason that should be dominant. But if the work does truly issue from the depths of his being, with the richness of musical harmony, then we need have no fear: it will be refracted in the minds of those upon whom it falls, to form a rainbow of light... The more the world is rationalized and mechanized, the more it needs 'poets' as the ferment within its personality and its preservative.[10]

[1] Pierre Teilhard the Chardin, " The Sense of Man" in Toward the Future (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 33.

[2] Pierre Teilhard the Chardin, "The Awaited Word" in Toward the Future, 96.

[3] Pierre Teilhard the Chardin, “Some Reflexions on the Conversion of the World” in Science and Christ (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 123.

[4] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Letters From a Traveler (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 164.

[5] Pierre Teilhard the Chardin, “My Universe” in Science and Christ, 68.

[6] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 64-65.

[7] Ibid.,  66.

[8] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., “The Mysticism of Science” in Human Energy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969), 180-181.

[9] Pierre Teilhard the Chardin, "Cosmic Life" in Writings in Time of War (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 34.

[10] Pierre Teilhard the Chardin, "The Function of Art as an Expression of Human Energy" in Toward the Future, 89-90.