YOU WILL DO GREATER WORKS THAN THESE

 

I'm presently enjoying Louis Savary's Teilhard de Chardin on the Eucharist. Chardin, you may know, was a Jesuit and a scientist who thought in terms of the ongoing evolution of all creation in our own day as heading toward a point of culmination in the future in the Universal Christ. His evolutionary perspective expands our narrow, comfortable view of the world to include the entire universe in the embrace of the Universal Christ. I'll share here some of Savary's Introduction, and hope that his words will speak to you as beautifully as they did to me.

Jesus of Nazareth once predicted that we -- those who had faith in him -- would be able to do everything he could do and more. "Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father" (john 14:12). Has this prediction proven to be true?

Yes, indeed.

The most prominent abilities of Jesus of Nazareth were huis abilities to heal illness and to cure people of mental or spiritual sickness (demonic possession). Jesus may have healed many people in one day. Today we may not be able to heal by mere touch as Jesus did. Perhaps, sometime in the future, when human consciousness has evolved, some among us may develop this ability.

Nevertheless, today, hospitals around the world, many founded by believers,
collectively heal tens of thousands of people every day. Technologies have helped develop surgical procedures and prosthetics that could never have been possible in Jesus' day, nor even a century ago. The Body of Christ on Earth evolves in its healing abilities each year as pharmaceutical laboratories develop drugs that help prevent and cure scores of physical and mental maladies. These companies have developed an arsenal of drugs to reduce pain and alleviate suffering. Today, biological science allows health-care technicians to adjust an individual's DNA by editing it, thus offering hope for a better, longer life for many. Medical technology is producing its own share of healings that would have been considered miracles a generation ago. 12

Savary goes on to list the advances in psychology and the social sciences as advancing the development of the Body of Christ, but here's the paragraph that caught my attention (the book was published in 2021): "Improvements in travel and communication make it possible for people to build and maintain friendships and families no matter where they live, thus providing another advance on how members of the Body of Christ can express love and care for each other." 13

During the past year of being locked down "remote" from one another, we've gotten accustomed communicating with one another via Zoom, Google Chat, Google Hangout, Skype. It's hard to keep track of all the platforms that keep coming out to facilitate our communicating with one another during the pandemic. When I read the paragraph above I realized that I was missing an important fact: I have been communicating with friends and acquaintances around the world at nio cost, seeing them and conversing easily in real time. Thanks to Savary and Chardin I got a deeper appreciation of the web of relationships that we humans have continued building during and because of the pandemic. The Universal Body of Christ continues to evolve.

Of course, I still pray for the day when we can share in the bread-and-wine Body of Christ, but meanwhile we can continue to take advantage of the advances in modern communications that allow us to build relationships of love and intimacy and so build up the Body of Christ in the best way we can.