THE « EVOLUTION » ACCORDING TO JESUS or the Truth about ourselves

Submitted to the law of growth, the living realizes oneself only by steps, in a progressive way, most of the time without any shock, but at times by starts or even by explosions.

The adult is already present in the child, but the adult shows up only after a long series of transformations. From the womb of the mother up to the sepulchre, we become other while never stopping from being who we are.

What is true for the individual is also true for the whole of mankind. Because mankind is alive, it is in the process of perpetual growth. Like each individual, it goes from childhood to maturity. Emerging from the deep night of the unconscious, it proceeds very slowly to full consciousness. Humanity is going through an « evolution ».

When it will reach the height of that long process of transformation, mankind will begin to decline and finally die away.

Still, it is possible that mankind would not die away, because somewhere at the heart of our being, throbs an instinct which opposes itself to any form of extinction, a kind of intuition, a very subtle but insisting one, that expects that, now or later, something else will happen.  

That « something else » is confirmed by Jesus in the Gospel with a disarming simplicity and an absolute certitude. In fact, Jesus speaks only about that. His teaching is entirely centered on that.

For him, the great human adventure is « pregnant » with a reality that is at the root itself of the being; it grows in it and ends by surpassing it indefinitely. He gives it the name of « Kingdom of God ».

That adventure which has extremely modest origins slowly unfolds itself in time to finally result into a true apotheosis.

« Apotheosis » means « deification ». What Jesus transmits to us from the depth of his entrails is the certitude that our reality of « earthlings », born from dust and destined to become dust, is graciously assumed by the Breath of God and transformed into the pure light of a full communion with the most intimate of God’s Being.

That intuition, that instinct, that mysterious reality inhabited by the God’s Spirit is totally concealed within the being of all humans, in their history and in the cosmos like a seed sowed into the soil. Jesus compares it to a plant of a vegetable garden that, at the beginning, has no appearance whatsoever but, after some time, surpasses all other plants and ends up by looking like a tree which delights the birds of the sky.

It is in that language of a mere seed which becomes the tallest plant of the vegetable garden, of grains of wheat that become bread, of yeast which makes the dough to grow, of bread that becomes flesh and of wine that becomes blood of the Living that Jesus speaks to us about the « evolution » and of its outcome beyond any hope.

Yes, it is really about the « Evolution », of that one which is still decried by the pride of the ignorant people, the one that reveals to us that we are fish which have become monkeys (is it not cute?), animals with four legs and then with two legs, made to be standing up, capable of reflection, of reasoning, of dreaming, of loving, capable of great poetry and incredible achievements, and also, without doubt, capable of the most beastly unconsciousness and of the worst cruelty but, thanks to the mercy and the pure goodness of God, capable of becoming creatures dazzling with light to the point of making the angels envious…

We are unfinished beings, beings on the road, beings which are on the way to become. We are not yet complete, we have not yet come to maturity; we have not reach our full expansion. What we are today is merely the shadow of what we will be tomorrow.

There are seeds of death within us, but there are seeds of life also. The Good News is that those seeds will grow until life prevails over death, and that one day it will happen totally.

                                      Eloy Roy

Translated from de French by Jacques Bourdages