The slow work of God

     “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 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 you tomorrow. Only God could say what this is new spirit, gradually forming within you, will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you surely through the obscurity and the becoming, and accept, for love of Him, the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.


     God has a plan and vision for each of us; to become the man or woman that He has called us to be from all eternity – to become a saint -- and that could take a heck of a long time, with a whole lot of ‘tweaking!’

     We want sanctity, without all the work and pain that goes along with it. We get impatient with ourselves, as well as others, expecting that they and we should have ‘arrived’ by now, when it becomes apparent that we, and most especially they, are far from achieving our goal.

     We are very uncomfortable with the ‘stages of instability’ that occur, as we are formed and shaped and mature. Suddenly, we don’t know how to ‘be’ or how to act. What had worked for us in the past now does not. We are in a state of flux which we’d rather avoid and would prefer instead, to pass effortlessly to the next level of growth and holiness.

     When we are cooperative to God’s grace and guidance, during the times when He allows circumstances to test us then we can be purified as gold in a furnace. These are the times, in hindsight, that we marvel at the ‘work of God’ and all that He accomplished in and through us . . . but as it is happening, there is nothing ‘marvelous’ about it!

     Only as we grow in love and as our trust in God deepens, will we be able to ‘sit’ with the anxiety of feeling ourselves in suspense and incomplete, realizing that “the One who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1 vs 6)