People were surprised by the impact of the talks given by Sr Ilia Delio when she was in Perth earlier this week.

‘This is the direction we [Christians, the Church] should be heading,’ one bishop declared.

These listeners were referring to Sister Ilia asking us to look at God’s world through modern lenses rather than our typical medieval thought forms. The evolutionary universe is a helpful framework for Christian spirituality, because God is love and love is dynamic, unfolding: evolutionary.  More than that, Sr Ilia claimed: evolutionary changes require chance, law and deep time. These three factors mean that in the short term, God’s universe can seem messy and unfinished, but creatures yearn to be more complete. Creation is on its way to its destination, which is none other the completion of the Incarnation of the Christ.

Sr Ilia’s main inspirations are the Franciscan theologians Bonaventure and Dun Scotus, and in the 20^th Century, the French Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin.

In her talk about living the Gospel in the 21^st Century, Ilia critiqued our usual approach to prayer as something we do in order to reach out to someone/something ‘out there’. But in reality, she reminded us, prayer is about going inward. If we abide in the presence of Christ, Christ is found in our hearts in our innermost selves. Prayer is not about ‘doing’, but about dwelling in ourselves and in all creation and therefore in Christ.

In an infinitely connected universe, we become more human by reaching out to others and to the future. Christ is incarnate in human being. The more we become ourselves, the more we express Christ.

In an aside about cyborgs, Ilia urged us to take note of the futurists’ warnings. Technology changes us: implants stop depression, Google changes the nature of information, and repaired organs give new but subtly different life. If the next steps in human evolution are to be hastened by technology (and Sr Ilia did not take sides in that particular controversy, but if we are,) then we need to take a close look at what that evolved humanity might be.

On the other hand, 96% of all species have lived – and then become extinct. Why should homo sapiens be any different? Could another species take up the cause of consciousness?

I heard Ilia Delio while reading Tom Frame’s excellent Evolution in the Antipodes which describes Darwin’s Australian legacy, beginning with Darwin’s visit to Port Jackson, Hobart and King George Sound in 1837, and continuing to whether creation science causes problems for Australian schools in the 2000s.

Tom’s careful analysis looks at Darwin from the point of view of the controversy his ideas sparked. We need to understand that history. But Sr Ilia admits nothing controversial about evolution: it is simply the way we moderns describe change in the universe. If we see things through the lens of evolution, we will know better who we are, and how to express whose we are.