The Cosmic Sacred Heart

 

Source

THE WORLD-ZEST,

THE ESSENCE OF ALL ENERGY,

THE COSMIC CURVE,

THE HEART OF GOD,

THE ISSUE OF COSMOGENESIS,

THE TIDE OF COSMIC CONVERGENCE,

THE GOD OF EVOLUTION,

THE UNIVERSAL JESUS,

FOCUS OF ULTIMATE AND UNIVERSAL ENERGY,

CENTER OF THE COSMIC SPHERE OF COSMOGENESIS,

HEART OF JESUS,

HEART OF EVOLUTION,

UNITE ME TO YOURSELF.

“Throughout my life, through my life, the world has, little by little, caught fire in my sight until, aflame all around me, it has become almost completely luminous from within.... Christ, his heart a fire, capable of penetrating everywhere, and gradually, spreading everywhere.”— PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

 ‘I am a child of Earth before being a child of God.

I can only grasp the Divine through the Cosmic.

You will never understand if you do not see that.’

(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Lettres à Jeanne Mortier 58 – 59)  The Heart of Jesus and Teilhard de Chardin

Teilhard de Chardin’s thought was deeply influenced by the Sacred Heart of Jesus. His mother was extremely devoted to the Sacred Heart and instilled in young Teilhard a similar devotion. Teilhard used the image of the Sacred Heart to develop his vision of God radiating the center of the universe.  As biographer Robert Speaight said about Teilhard de Chardin when he was in his early 20s:

“Teilhard recalls an evening when he had spoken of his vision of Christ, of how the universe had come to assume for him the lineaments of the divine figure. Pausing one day before the image of the Sacred Heart, he had wondered how an artist could represent the humanity of Jesus without giving it a beauty too individual and exclusive. Gradually the contours of the picture – the folds of the robe, the radiance of the head – dissolved without quite disappearing, so that on the surface of separation between Christ and the world the limits of either were indistinguishable. The vibration extended to the limits of the universe itself, but when the objects included in it were examined one by one they still preserved their individual character. They were transformed, but they were not lot lost; leading the gaze of the beholder back to the source of their illumination which was the faced of Christ himself.”

— “The Life of Teilhard de Chardin” by Robert Speaight, p. 79

As Teilhard de Chardin later developed his theological vision, the Sacred Heart continued to be a focal point for him.  As Robert Speaight said:

“What conquered [Teilhard] and held him captive – the mainspring of his very personal apostolate – was the resurrected Christ visible in the world of appearances, and manifesting a power which the Resurrection had certified. In the same way, what attracted him to the Sacred Hearth was its symbolic power and its superhuman appeal – the discovery ‘in you of an element even more determinate, more circumscribed, than your humanity as a whole’. The Sacred Heart . . . was for Teilhard a means of devotional escape from whatever was ‘too narrow, too precise, and too limited’ in the traditional image of Christ.”

 — “The Life of Teilhard de Chardin” by Robert Speaight, p. 128 Source

Artist: Br Robert Lentz OFM

The Sacred Heart, or the heart of Christ, has been a familiar image in the Catholic Church for several centuries. In the seventeenth century, Margaret Mary, a French mystic had a vision of the Christ revealing his heart to her. Ever since then, religious artists have struggled to depict what she saw.

 In the first half of the twentieth century, another French mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, raised the image of the Sacred Heart to more cosmic dimensions. Teilhard was a Jesuit priest and a paleontologist whose life work was doing research on the origins of the human race -- a research which lifted his soul to mystical heights. For Teilhard, the Christ was a divine fire that was capable of penetrating everything -- bringing all creation ever closer to God. In his personal journal he wrote, "Heart of Jesus, Heart of Evolution," and "the Sacred Heart is the Center of Christ, who centers all on himself."

 In Popol Vuh, the ancient Mayan account of creation, the Creator of all is called "Heart of the Heavens, Heart of the Earth." The Mayan image is similar to Teilhard’s. This icon combines both images -- a Mayan Christ bursts from the blazing heart of the cosmos, carrying his flame reaching out drawing all into his creative fire Source

Comments