Today, we pray for trust. We pray for the grace to be patient, which is one of the hardest things to do if we are in a hurry and are action-oriented and want things done and fast. We pray for trust because there are things in our lives that has to grow on its own without our control. We pray for trust, because life is lived in stages, and there are stages we cannot short circuit. Reflect on the following questions and then pray the prayer of Teilhard de Chardin after:
1. What thing in your life are you impatient about right now? What do you want accomplished immediately?
2. Why are you impatient about it? What is at stake if it doesn’t happen?
3. What is the worst case scenario if that thing doesn’t happen?
Patient Trust
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 though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of 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.
Amen.
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