Teach my heart true purity, which is not an imperfect separation from things, but the driving force across all beauties. Reveal to it true love, which is not a barren fear of committing evil, but an energetic will to break through the doors of life together; and ultimately – and above all – grant it, through the growing perception of Your omnipresence, the blessed passion to discover the world, to shape it, and to bear it ever so slightly more, so that it may penetrate increasingly into You.
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ /1881–1955/, excerpt from the text Mass over the World;
quoted according to the book Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Heart of Matter, Malvern 2024, edited)
