Patient Trust Prayer of Teilhard de Chardin

Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest and a philosopher. This prayer of patient trust is about waiting patiently for God. It is especially good for high school students and young adults who are discerning a vocation or possible career.

We can be impatient about wanting an answer from God during the discernment process and this prayer is a good way to help trust that God will eventually show us where we are supposed to head.

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 his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

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