The whole life lies in the verb seeing.
For me, the Immaculate Conception is the feast of 'passive action,' the action that functions simply by the transmission through us of divine energy. Purity, in spite of outward appearances, is essentially an active virtue, because it concentrates God in us and on those who are subject to our influence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the idea of divine energy being transmitted through individuals, highlighting the active nature of purity and its influence on others.
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin's quote reflects on the concept of the Immaculate Conception as a celebration of 'passive action,' signifying that true purity and virtue stem from allowing divine energy to flow through us. Rather than merely appearing pure, this active virtue shapes our essence and those around us, demonstrating that genuine spirituality is rooted in the engagement with divine presence.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about spirituality, one might invoke this quote to illustrate the power of divine influence in our actions.
More from Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
All quotes βReligion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge - the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution and so contemplate, measure and fulfil them.
The mineral world is a much more supple and mobile world than could be imagined by the science of the ancients. Vaguely analogous to the metamorphoses of living creatures, there occurs in the most solid rocks, as we now know, perpetual transformation of a mineral species.
We may, perhaps, imagine that the creation was finished long ago. But that would be quite wrong. It continues still more magnificently, and at the highest levels of the world.
Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. All we need is to imagine our ability to love developing until it embraces the totality of men and the earth.
If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinions. There are a good many points about which I may be diffident, but when it comes to questions of Truth and intellectual independence, there is no holding me - I can envisage no finer end than to sacrifice oneself for a conviction.
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Since the nation's founding, African Americans repeatedly have been controlled through institutions such as slavery and Jim Crow, which appear to die, but then are reborn in new form, tailored to the needs and constraints of the time.
If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or for being slaves.
I like to live my life so that my loved ones give me the things I need as gifts and I give them the things they need. Frankly a society built around consumerism is hell
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.
Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice.