Extract from the hymn to matter of P. Teilhard de Chardin, S.J
Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome
(Nov. 9, 2009
Extract from the hymn to matter of P. Teilhard de Chardin, S.J
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‘Blessed be you, perilous matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever new-born; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.
‘Blessed be you, universal matter, immeasurable time, boundless ether, triple abyss of stars and atoms and generations: you who by overflowing and dissolving our narrow standards or measurement reveal to us the dimensions of God.
‘Blessed be you, impenetrable matter: you who, interposed between our minds and the world of essences, cause us to languish with the desire to pierce through the seamless veil of phenomena.
‘Blessed be you, mortal matter: you who one day will undergo the process of dissolution within us and will thereby take us forcibly into the very heart of that which exists.
‘Without you, without your onslaughts, without your uprooting of us, we should remain all our lives inert, stagnant, puerile, ignorant both of ourselves and of God. You who batter us and then dress our wounds, you who resist us and yield to us, you who wreck and build, you who shackle and liberate, the sap of our souls, the hand of God, the flesh of Christ: it is you, matter that I bless.
‘I bless you, matter, and you I acclaim: not as the pontiffs of science or the moralizing preachers depict, debased, disfigured – a mass of brute forces and base appetites – but as you reveal yourself to me today, in your totality and your true nature.
‘You I acclaim as the inexhaustible potentiality for existence and transformation wherein the predestined substance germinates and grows.
‘I acclaim you as the universal power which brings together and unites, through which the multitudinous monads are bound together and in which they converge on the way of the Spirit.
‘I acclaim you as the melodious fountain of water whence spring the souls of men and as the limpid crystal whereof is fashioned the new Jerusalem.
‘I acclaim you as the divine milieu, charged with creative power, as the ocean stirred by the Spirit, as the clay molded and infused with life by the incarnate Word.
‘Sometimes, thinking they are responding to your irresistible appeal, men will hurl themselves for love of you into exterior abyss of selfish pleasure-seeking: they are deceived by a reflection or by an echo.
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