Trusting in the Slow Work of God

This morning, a friend struggling with various problems shared with me that his spiritual director had given him this piece of advice: Trust in the slow work of God.

The sentence is not original. My friend's director had borrowed it from one of the writings of the great Jesuit scientist and thinker, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

The spiritual director, with a touch of humor, had continued: God's work is slow, because you are a slow learner.

"We all are," I told my friend reflectively. "We are all slow learners. Besides," I added, "maybe God's work is slow because it is meant to go deep. Work that goes too fast tends to be superficial, to remain on the surface."

I felt this morning that that single sentence of Teilhard was a word from On High for me too.

Especially during this last month of my term as Provincial, as I try to resolve problems quickly--perhaps too quickly-- for the sake of sparing my successor additional burdens; as I find myself perhaps rushing solutions because of an imminent deadline; as I become more aware of all that I have left undone or done poorly because of my considerable limitations and weaknesses; as I catch myself reviewing and questioning the rightness or wrongness of decisions I have made, especially about people;  as I occasionally wonder about the significance and enduring value of what I have tried to contribute these past four years; and as I find myself surprised by anxieties about the family, especially the mother, I will leave here in Manila when I move to Rome, Teilhard's words hit me with a kind of deep resonance and liberating clarity.

So here are the words of that wise Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin. May they bear God's wisdom and a share of his infinite peace to those who read them:

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 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 . . .

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, SJ