If God accepts the world, if He carries out His descent into it in such a way that He experiences the abandonment of death as the appearance of sin and Godlessness in order to include it in His glorification, if He takes a piece of this world, which always remains just that, into His glory with Him, then the world is indeed irrevocably accepted, and no one can ever wrench it from the hand of the resurrected and ascended Lord. Then the world has ascended to heaven in His Person.

In this way, the world entered into its final phase. We might even say that thus the heart of this despairing world has been changed into something good. Ultimately, the world has already been set right, for He, the living center of history and even of nature, became flesh and is even now glorified. Thus, everything that happens in the world now is either an effect of His victory or a last-ditch battle of those worldly powers that were conquered by His cross.

It will always be difficult for us to look at the world and the world’s history in this way. But this only means that we have not yet come to the inner realization that the final victory is really already present in our hearts – hearts into which Christ has poured His spirit of victory over the world…

This is nothing else but the glorification of the world and of man, which can only happen through grace. Of course, this glorification can only be believed in grace, for only under the influence of grace can a person muster up the boundless optimism to be convinced that God has already begun to be ‘all in all’ (1 Cor 15,28).

- Karl Rahner, SJ. Spiritual Exercises. New York: Herder & Herder, 1965.