Saturday, March 21, 2026
I have a tendency to want to control things in my life – the big, the small, the in between…just so long as everything goes according to my plan! So when uncertainty comes and I can’t see the road ahead, I’m naturally anxious and have a tendency to close myself off or shut down. Can anyone relate?
It’s in times like these that I go back to one of my very favorite prayers: The Prayer of Patient Trust by Jesuit priest Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ.
Pray this prayer slowly today. How is God asking for your patience and your 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 his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.