Another good reflection in the spirit of Teilhard de Chardin during the Easter Octave, this time from Christine McCarthy of Daily Theology:

“This person, Jesus of Nazareth, was composed of star stuff and earth stuff; his life formed a genuine part of the historical and biological community of Earth; his body existed in a network of relationships drawing from and extending to the whole physical universe. If in death this ‘piece of this world, real to the core,’ as [Karl] Rahner phrases it, surrendered his life in love and is now forever with God in glory, then this signals embryonically the final beginning of redemptive glorification not just for other human beings but for all flesh, all material beings, every creature that passes through death. The evolving world of life, all of matter in its endless permutations, will not be left behind but will likewise be transfigured by the resurrecting action of the Creator Spirit. The tomb’s emptiness signals this cosmic realism. The same early Christian human that recognizes Christ as ‘firstborn of the dead’ also names him ‘the firstborn of all creation’ (Col. 1.15).”