Tuesday, December 5, 2017

We are quite naturally impatient (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)


   Above all, trust in the slow work of God. 
We are quite naturally impatient in everything 
            to reach the end without delay. 
We should like to skip the intermediate stages. 
We are impatient of being on the way to something 
            unknown, something new.  And yet it is the law 
            of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages 
            of instability—and that it may take a very long time. 

And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually – 
let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. 
Don’t try to force them on, as through you could be today what time 
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) 
            will make you tomorrow. 

Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming 
            within you will be. 
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, 
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete. 

--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., Hearts on Fire

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