"The keynote address by Delio, who holds doctorates in pharmacology and theology and is known for her work on environmental issues, was titled: “Religious Life on the Edge of the Universe.”
Speaking in two sessions for more than a combined 2.5 hours -- and taking questions for another hour -- Delio first focused on the continuing human understanding of the history and function of the 13.8 billion-year-old universe before asking how the historical and mystical persons of Jesus Christ fit into those understandings.
“A dynamic universe provokes the idea and the understanding of a dynamic God,” Delio, the director of Catholic studies at Georgetown University, said. “This is not a stay-at-home God.”
“This is a God who is deeply immersed in a love affair with the beloved, the creation which flows out of his divine heart,” she continued. To say that God is love, she said is “to mean that God is eternally and dynamically in love.”
Drawing from her description of an evolutionary universe, Delio said there were four lessons she wanted to highlight for the sisters:
- The universe is unfinished: “God is not finished creating … and therefore life is not behind us, it is ahead of us.”
- Death is integral to life: “We are trying to hold on and grip and the tighter we grip the more we snuff out any life that’s there.”
- People are not fixed essences but “dynamic becomings:” “What we become will depend on our participation.”
- Live in an “open system:” “A closed system will wear down and wear out.”
Peppering her talk with references to theologians and scientists, ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Galileo and Newton to Aquinas and Fr. Raimon Panikkar, Delio also told the sisters to consider Jesus as a “whole-maker” -- someone who “brings together what is fragmented and divided.”
“For too long we have had a sense of Catholic as sameness,” Delio said. “In the person of Jesus of Nazareth there is a new spirit -- a spirit of gathering. Jesus is constantly going out and gathering in.”
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