Delio Delivers Bergoglio Lecture: Love Is All You Need

In Sister Ilia Delio’s universe, science and religion entangle in search of a perfect union

The technology that improves our lives in so many ways is awe-inspiring, but it would mean nothing without religion, connection and the power of love, Sister Ilia Delio recently told a standing-room-only crowd at Sacred Heart University.

“We can get smart. We can go faster. But we don’t know where we’re going,” Delio said. 

Delio’s talk, “Evolution, Posthumanism and the New Catholicity,” was the annual Jorge Bergoglio Lecture, co-sponsored by the Department of Catholic Studies, Office of Mission & Catholic Identity and the Human Journey Colloquia Series.

Earlier in the day, Delio, who holds the Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology at Villanova University, received an honorary degree at a special Academic Convocation in SHU’s Chapel of the Holy Spirit.

A sought-after speaker and award-winning author, Delio presented a whirlwind tour of the cosmos, deftly touching on how science and religion have met, matched and clashed in the theories of philosophers and physicists through the ages.

Delving into early concepts of God and the center of the universe, she touched on Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton and Einstein before moving on to evolution and her belief that “life transcends itself to more life” when its situation becomes taxing and requires change.

That brought her to technology. Looking for the thing that’s adapting and changing most rapidly today, she asked her listeners to consider the cell phone and computers.

“Technology is the new space of transcendence,” said Delio, who earned doctorates in pharmacology and theology. “We go online to seek what is not yet visible in our lives. Technology is not just a tool. It draws us because of something deeply connecting in it.”

As beings hardwired for relationships and connection, cyberspace fills a void. However, she asked, where is the meaning? What do we want with technology, and why?

This essential question has led to two paths – transhumanism and posthumanism. Transhumanism seeks to move toward the perfect human, finding utopia through technology, Delio said, while posthumanism, which flows from earlier feminist thought, allows that we can become something more, not something “other.” For that, she turned to Pierre Teilhard de Chardins, the French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest, who presented a deep vision of Catholicity in his writing from World War I through the 1930s.

God and the world are an “entangled whole,” and evolution is evidence that a present God is “doing something new,” she said.

Delio sees Jesus as an example of that concept. By forming relationships with gentiles and reaching out to those who were not traditionally a focus of the Jewish faith, he was pushing and probing boundaries, doing something new, she said. 

As “matter, bodies in search of a meaning,” people need contemplation—meditation, yoga and other mindfulness practices, said Delio, who spent four years in a cloister. “We need to unplug and sit quietly and begin to know ourselves in a deeper way.”

It is through deep contemplation—and with the aid of all that technology has to offer—that Delio believes we will know the core of the universe: love.

“Technology is a mirror of our desires,” she said. “We long to be connected. We long to belong to another. We long to give our hearts away to another.”

 If you are unable to view the images above, visit the Sr. Ilia Delio photo gallery on Flickr.