Reflection
Christianity is about new life. It is about the fulfillment of God’s promise and hope for new creation and, as far as we know, we are the one species on the planet who can respond to God’s grace in freedom. Resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote future, but it is the power of the New Being to create life out of death, here and now, today and tomorrow. Where there is New Being, there is resurrection. Resurrection happens now, or it does not happen at all. It happens in us and around us, in persons and history, in nature and universe…We are the continuation of Christ in evolution and the direction of evolution depends on our choices and actions. We are to give ourselves to Christ and to his cause and values, which means not losing the world but finding it in its deepest relation to God.
Ilia Delio
Prayer
The Spirit makes all things new.
Action
What does it mean that the direction of evolution depends on our choices and actions? Where do you see that happening? Given the power we have what is our responsibility?
Suggested Reading
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
Isaiah 43:18-19
Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
2 Corinthians 4:16-17
God created human beings and let them develop according to the internal laws that he gave to each one so they would reach their fulfillment…Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.
Pope Francis
With all the inadequacies of any narrative, the epic of evolution does present the story of the universe as this story is now available to us out of our present experience. This is our sacred story. It is our way of dealing with the ultimate mystery whence all things come into being.
Thomas Berry
We have reached a crossroads in human evolution where the only road which leads forward is towards a common passion. . . To continue to place our hopes in a social order achieved by external violence would simply amount to our giving up all hope of carrying the Spirit of the Earth to its limits.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
For the first time in human evolution, the individual life is long enough, and the cultural transformation swift enough, that the individual mind is now a constituent player in the global transformation of human culture.
William Irwin Thompson
What we usually call human evolution is the awakening of the divine nature within us.
Peace Pilgrim
The next step in human evolution is not inevitable, but for the first time in the history of the planet, it can be a conscious choice. Who is making that choice? You are. And who are you? Consciousness that has become conscious of itself.
Eckhart Tolle
Evolution has no purpose; man must supply this for himself. The means to gaining right ends involve both organic evolution and human evolution, but human choice as to what are the right ends must be based on human evolution.
George Gaylord Simpson
What the Ecozoic era seeks ultimately is to bring the human activities on the Earth into alignment with the other forces functioning throughout the planet so that a creative balance will be achieved. When the curvature of the universe, the curvature of the Earth, and the curvature of the human are once more in their proper relation, then Earth will have arrived at the celebratory experience that is the fulfillment of earthly existence.
Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story
The point of Jesus’ existence wasn’t to lessen or diminish our appreciation of each other, but to expand our appreciation of each other by reminding us what lies within all of us, because Jesus was an example of the pinnacle of human evolution.
Marianne Williamson
In our contemplation of how tragic moments of disintegration over the course of the centuries were followed by immensely creative moments of renewal, we receive our great hope for the future. To initiate and guide this next creative moment of the story of the Earth is the Great Work of the religions of the world as we move on into the future.
Thomas Berry