God’s bestowal of grace began with time itself. It is interwoven in our history. Through the work of the Holy spirit, all creation has been pressured from within to evolve. Inert matter evolved, becoming ever more conscious, until, at a particular moment in the concrete history of the world, self-reflective consciousness emerged in a species we call human. The material universe that came into existence and was maintained by grace finally became aware of the grace that had been there all along, the self-communication of the Holy that was at the heart of life.
Field of Compassion: How the New Cosmology Is Transforming Spiritual Life, by Judy Cannato, p. 148.