We invite you to spend some contemplative time over the summer to ponder God’s love for us through poetry.
You can participate at your own pace and wherever you are comfortable.
What is the grace I ask of God during this retreat?
What is God’s desire for me in this retreat?
As we step out into the deep together, let us reflect on these words:
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 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 [God’s] hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
