Ilia Delio > Quotes

“Life in God should be a daring adventure of love—a continuous journey of putting aside our securities to enter more profoundly into the uncharted depths of God. Too often, however, we settle for mediocrity. We follow the rules and practices of prayer but we are unwilling or, for various reasons, unable to give ourselves totally to God. To settle on the plain of mediocrity is really to settle for something less than God that leaves the heart restless and unfulfilled. A story from the desert fathers reminds us that giving oneself wholly to God can make a difference: Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”15”
― Ilia Delio, Franciscan Prayer

“Thomas Merton expresses the need for this mystical imperative: The Christian’s vision of the world ought, by its very nature, to have in it something of poetic inspiration. Our faith ought to be capable of filling our hearts with a wonder and a wisdom which see beyond the surface of things and events, and grasp something of the inner and “sacred” meaning of the cosmos which, in all its movements and all its aspects, sings the praises of its Creator and Redeemer.2”
― Ilia Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

“Spiritual desire is the experience of God’s presence in us or it may be the absence of God as well, since a feeling of absence may stimulate a yearning for God. It is the experience of delightful love and fearful emptiness.”
― Ilia Delio, Franciscan Prayer

“As Rahner puts it in another place, the resurrection is “the beginning of the transformation of the world as an ontologically interconnected occurrence.”34 The final destiny of the world is not only promised, but already begun. The risen Christ is the “pledge and beginning of the perfect fulfillment of the world.” He is the “representative of the new cosmos.”35”
― Ilia Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

“The resurrection happens in the present moment, but it is a present moment bathed in future, a new relationship with God, a new union, a new wholeness—a new catholicity—by which life is wholly unified.”
― Ilia Delio, Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness

“Describing Francis as the truly humble person, Bonaventure writes: “As Christ’s disciple he strove to regard himself as worthless in his own eyes and those of others. He used to make this statement frequently: ‘What a person is before God, that he is and no more.’”34”
― Ilia Delio, Franciscan Prayer

“God is the newness of everything that is and is coming to be. God is ever newness in love. Transcendence, therefore, is the future beyond that draws us in the present movement toward greater wholeness and unity.”
― Ilia Delio, The Emergent Christ: Exploring the Meaning of Catholic in an Evolutionary Universe

“Christ is not only the name of an historical personage but a reality in our own lives.”32  He uses the term “christophany” to indicate that each person bears the mystery of Christ within.”
― Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution

“Thus, the direction of evolution is toward the maximization of goodness, especially if we maintain that the incarnation is the goal of evolution. If Jesus Christ is truly creator (as divine Word) and redeemer (as Word Incarnate) then what is created out of love is ultimately redeemed by love. The meaning of Christ is summed up in creation’s potential for self transcendent love.”
― Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution

“To follow Jesus is to be a wholemaker, essentially to love the world into new being and life.”
― Ilia Delio, Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness

“Christ is the model for creation so that, “what happened between God and the world in Christ points to the future of the cosmos. It is a future that involves the radical transformation of created reality through the unitive power of God’s love.”28  This universe, therefore, has a destiny; the world will not be destroyed. Rather, “it will be brought to the conclusion which God intends for it from the beginning, which is anticipated in the mystery of the Incarnate Word and glorified Christ.”
― Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution

“We humans are evolution made conscious; hence, our choices for and in the world shape the future of the world.”
― Ilia Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

“The cross and resurrection won the victory over evil, but it is the task of the Spirit, and those led by the Spirit, to implement that victory in and for the whole world. The victory is found not in the life of Jesus alone but in his death and resurrection. It is in the resurrection that the power of Jesus as the Christ is experienced.”
― Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution

“Secularization is not a zero-sum game necessitating the demise of supernaturalism. Nor does the new spirituality reject science. What it rejects is scientism in which the methodology and data of natural science alone are allowed to contribute to our understanding of the world and the human condition in it. The new spirituality also calls on natural science itself as a witness against the inadequacies of a purely secularized worldview.”
― Ilia Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

“From within the heart of matter, I hold together the foundations of the universe.”
― Ilia Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

“The discoveries of twentieth–century science, especially Big Bang cosmology (“universalism” or cosmic wholeness) and evolution (nature's openness to the future), ushered in two new dimensions of life, wholeness and futurism. Contrary to the ancient Ptolemaic cosmos of order, stasis, and hierarchy, the Big Bang cosmos was now seen in its evolving capacity for greater wholeness and openness to consummation in the future.”
― Ilia Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

“The foundation of existence is not mere being itself (what is) but relationality (what is becoming): union is always toward more being.”
― Ilia Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

“Evolution means that nature does not operate according to fixed laws but by the dynamic interplay of law, chance, and deep time; that is, one cannot understand natural processes apart from developmental categories. The interaction of forces creates a dynamic process of unfolding life, pointing to the fact that nature is incomplete; there are no fixed essences. Instead, nature is consistently oriented toward new and complex life.”
― Ilia Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

“When we fail to appreciate Sophia’s presence at work in nature, we are also more likely to fail to appreciate the sacred”
― Ilia Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

“I want to highlight the spirit of Pope Francis. Elected to the papacy following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis (Jose Maria Bergoglio), in his late seventies, brings a new spirit to the Church that reflects a consciousness of catholicity that we explore here. His is an inner spirit of freedom grounded in the love of God, guided by the gospel message of the new kingdom at hand, and open to a world of change. He desires a Church on the margins, where the poor and the forgotten can be brought into a new unity; a Church that advocates life at all costs and promotes peaceful life in a war-torn and violent world; a Church that models justice in an age of greed, consumerism, and power; a Church centered on the risen Christ, empowering a consciousness of the whole. This is a church leader who desperately wants to breathe a new spirit of catholicity into a world dying for wholeness and unity.”
― Ilia Delio, Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness

“Contemplative vision is the vision that says “you are good as you are because you are the sacrament of God’s love.”
― Ilia Delio, Franciscan Prayer

“The new atheism has attracted considerable attention today, but apart from the public hype, it offers no substantial change or direction to modernity's problems. Religion may be the opium of the masses but atheism offers no new yeast as leaven for the masses.”
― Ilia Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

“With this new sense of moving forward, from simple to complex life forms, from bacteria to humans, science shows that evolution is more than a method of collecting and classifying the facts of life; rather it is the means by which humanity can move forward into the future.”
― Ilia Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

“Go, my dear brothers two by two through different parts of the word, announcing peace to the people and penance for the remission of sins.”5”
― Ilia Delio, Franciscan Prayer

“God is the newest thing there is, the youngest thing there is. God is the beginning and if we are united to God we become new again.”
― Ilia Delio, The Emergent Christ: Exploring the Meaning of Catholic in an Evolutionary Universe

“Christ is both the One and the Many. William Thompson states that Merton’s view of the transcultural Christ means the emergence of “a person of such inner calm and personal and cultural detachment that she is capable of recognizing and perspectivizing the genuine values present in every person and every culture.”
― Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution

“The experience that the God we meet in prayer and in history actually loves us indicates, as we have seen, that we make a difference to the eternal God. The hope, then, is that nothing good is lost. Even though each and every accomplishment we achieve will eventually become space dust, and that dust may itself dissipate into cold cosmic darkness, we hope that God will not let our efforts turn to nothing. We hope and we sense that all is preserved in God”
― Ilia Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

“For the Franciscans, there is no such thing as “brute matter.”
― Ilia Delio, Franciscan Prayer

“cult of cosmic pessimism. Cosmic pessimism is the belief that nature has no purpose and that whatever meaning exists in the world is our own human creation. This belief is taken for granted by most scientific thinkers today, but with the aid of the new idea of an unfinished universe, theology may point out that cosmic pessimism, which is usually taken as the epitome of hard-nosed realism, is not as self-evidently justifiable as it seems to most contemporary intellectuals. Geology, evolutionary biology, and cosmology now situate Earth, life, and human existence within the framework of an immense cosmic drama of transformation that is still going on.”
― Ilia Delio, From Teilhard to Omega: Co-creating an Unfinished Universe

“Saint John Paul II wrote, “when its concepts and conclusions can be integrated into the wider human culture and its concerns for ultimate meaning and value.”7 Religion, too, develops best when its doctrines are not abstract and fixed in an ancient past but integrated into the wider stream of life. Albert Einstein once said that “science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind.”8 So too, John Paul II wrote: “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.”9 Teilhard de Chardin saw that dialogue alone between the disciplines is insufficient; what we need is a new synthesis of science and religion, drawing insights from each discipline into a new unity. In a remarkable letter to the director of the Vatican Observatory, John Paul II wrote: The church does not propose that science should become religion or religion science. On the contrary, unity always presupposes the diversity and integrity of its elements. Each of these members should become not less itself but more itself in a dynamic interchange, for a unity in which one of the elements is reduced to the other is destructive, false in its promises of harmony, and ruinous of the integrity of its components. We are asked to become one. We are not asked to become each other. . . . Unity involves the drive of the human mind towards understanding and the desire of the human spirit for love. When human beings seek to understand the multiplicities that surround them, when they seek to make sense of experience, they do so by bringing many factors into a common vision. Understanding is achieved when many data are unified by a common structure. The one illuminates the many: it makes sense of the whole. . . . We move towards unity as we move towards meaning in our lives. Unity is also the consequence of love. If love is genuine, it moves not towards the assimilation of the other but towards union with the other. Human community begins in desire when that union has not been achieved, and it is completed in joy when those who have been apart are now united.10 The words of the late pope highlight the core of catholicity: consciousness of belonging to a whole and unity as a consequence of love.”
― Ilia Delio, Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness