Dear Marguerite,
I am writing in response to your letter from January 5, which naturally arrived an hour after I dropped off a note for you. Thank you for your wishes for the New Year and once again: may the peace of God and the overwhelming love of our Lord increasingly dwell in you! It is possible that you feel very far from the ideal and the desired unification of your being in God. Patiently surrender yourself. What matters is that you focus and lift yourself towards the Center of all life and happiness with your longing, prayers, and efforts. All that is required of us is good will… Once God discovers this good will in some human monad, sooner or later – even in death – He will fulfill the efforts of His creature and take charge of them.
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ /1881–1955/, letter from the front, to his cousin, January 12, 1916;
quoted from the book Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Birth of Thought. Letters 1914–1919, Malvern 2021)
