Death, such as the death of [your father and] my uncle, shakes the past of the entire family. After it, nothing is as it was before, because the former framework of our memories and our earthly abode is disturbed or shattered (…). Is it not rather the Providence-given economy of all life that burns bridges behind us and drives us forward through a continuous detachment (which has its meaning and sweetness, knowing that it leads to an eternal home where many abodes await us)? (…)
It seemed to me that the only and great prayer that needs to be uttered in these hours, when the path ahead plunges into darkness, is the prayer of the Lord on the Cross: In manus tuas commendo spiritum meum. Into your hands, which broke the bread and breathed life into it, which blessed and caressed, which were pierced; – into hands that are like ours, where we can never say what they will do with the object they hold, whether they will break it or care for it, but whose whims, we are certain, are full of goodness and will never go beyond holding us jealously for themselves; – into tender and mighty hands that touch even to the marrow of bones, – that shape and create; – into those hands through which such great love flows, it is good to entrust your soul, especially if we suffer and are afraid. And in such an endeavor, there is great happiness and great merit. Let us do this together, shall we?
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ /1881–1955/, letter from the front, to his cousin, November 23, 1916;
quoted from the book Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Birth of Thought. Letters 1914–1919, 2021)
