“What the modern mind finds disconcerting in Christian charity is its negative or at least static aspect, and also the “detached” quality of this great virtue. “Love one another …” Hitherto the gospel precept has seemed simply to mean, “Do not harm one another,” or, “Seek with all possible care and devotion to diminish injustice, heal wounds and soften enmities in the world around you.” Hitherto, also, the “supernatural” gift of ourselves which we were required to make to God and to our neighbor appeared to be something opposed to and destructive of the bonds of feeling attaching us to the things of this world.

But if Charity is transplanted into the cone of Time nothing remains of these apparent limitations and restrictions. Within a Universe of convergent structure the only possible way in which an element can draw closer to its neighboring elements is by tightening the cone — that is to say, by causing the whole layer of the world of which it is a part to move toward the apex. In such an order of things no man can love his neighbor without drawing nearer to God — and, of course, reciprocally (but this we knew already). But it is also impossible (this is newer to us) to love either God or our neighbor without assisting the progress, in its physical entirety, of the terrestrial synthesis of the spirit: since it is precisely the progress of this synthesis which enables us to draw closer together among ourselves, while at the same time it raises us toward God.Because we love, and in order that we may love even more, we find ourselves happily and especially compelled to participate in all the endeavors, all the anxieties, all the aspirations and also all the affections of the earth — in so far as these embody a principle of ascension and synthesis.”

– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, pp. 86-87