The Spiritual Exercises with Teilhard de Chardin

This book presents here a series of texts taken from the writings of Teilhard de Chardin, which give us a new perspective on the traditional meditations of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, now illuminated through the changing world presented to us by the sciences and the presence of Christ in it. Through these texts, we can get close to this new approach to the Exercises, which has received little attention so far.

Teilhard de Chardin's spirituality is reflected in his practice of the Exercises. To him, the meditations of the Exercises must adapt to the new circumstances and desires of the modern world, influenced above all by the progress of science and technology. The meditations of the Exercises, devised by St. Ignatius from a static conception of the universe, must adapt today to the perspective of a dynamic world, developing from the Big Bang to this day, and continuing through human effort and work.

To Teilhard, the incarnation represents God's integration into the world in Christ, so that he is the end point, or Omega, and the entire evolution aims to him. This vision of Christ should be the one that illuminates us today in the meditations of the Exercises. Teilhard expands the presence of Christ to the whole universe and considers it as Christic presence in his "cosmic" nature. In this way, if the world eventually evolves into its union with Christ, the cosmogenesis of evolution becomes a Cristogenesis, and finally, Christ's presence in the world leads us to consider the world itself as a divine milieu and a Christified world.

Agustín Udías Vallina, SJ, is a Jesuit priest, emeritus professor of Geophysics at the Complutense University of Madrid, and a member of the European Academy and corresponding member of the Royal Academy of History
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