Lenten Impatience

Lent, for all its inconveniences, is quickly becoming one of my favorite seasons. (Ah, well, the idea of a "favorite season" is less than useful. Advent and Christmas and Easter are also some of my favorite seasons. One might observe, I suppose, that the tempus per annum is less interesting, except for its various feast days, many of which are regrettably overlooked.) I appreciate Lent because it is a time in which we are encouraged to change.

Change, though perhaps uncomfortable, is preferable to stasis. I grow most melancholy when I feel myself trapped in the same patterns — of incuriosity, of inefficiency, of sin — and unable to change them. Not for nothing is Dante's hell a place of eternal immutableness: its denizens are forever trapped in the state they have chosen. We may, therefore, be eager — indeed, impatient — to better ourselves, to improve our situation. And yet the higher power that orders our personal change is not beholden to our impatience. In the great majority of cases, we only notice personal changes after a length of time, if at all. I suppose we must learn to wait for such things.

The other day an acquaintance posted a germane poem (on, sigh, Facebook). I'll let the Jesuït speak for himself.

Patient Trust, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ

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.