To All The Impatient

Once one falls deeper in love with God, and once one has been brought further and further into the Interior Castle, a basic tension can build up in our life: living in the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’. Having tasted the goodness of the Lord, we want the whole feast; having known Him, but only partially, we want to know Him wholly. On the other hand, we begin to see the inadequacy of life to satisfy our deepest desires. We have made contact with the One in whom our restless hearts rest. And then, one way or another, we have to wait.

For a certain type of person this can create a pocket of impatience in our soul. This unveils a fundamental lack of humility, which, no doubt, the Lord intends to burn away. Our Lord wants us to wait, in hope, that His promises are faithful and that indeed, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). In the meantime, here is some wisdom for restless, impatient hearts.

Patience is also a form of action. (Auguste Rodin)

Slowness is beauty. (Auguste Rodin)

Hope is to [consumeristic] desire what patience is to passivity. (Gabriel Marcel)

Time is precious, it is the presence of God. (Fr. Tadeusz Dajczer)

Life is for living, time is for finding God. (Fr. Jacques Philippe)

Lastly, this is a prayer by Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin entitled Patient Trust:

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 progress

that it is made by passing through

some states 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.