Jesuit Fr. and anthropologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin during the dig for Peking Man at Zhoukoudian, c. 1925, fifth from left.
Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message
January 8, 2014
The Benefit of Believing
We often say we need to give someone the “benefit of the
doubt,” meaning that we cut them some slack and act as if we believe them even
if we have our doubts. This is, at
best, a minimalist virtue. Perhaps a
better way of thinking, a better virtue to emulate, is giving the “benefit of
believing,” actually having a default position of trusting and believing rather
than first of all judging and doubting.
Such open-mindedness and open-heartedness is essential to spiritual
growth. Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
S.J., wrote the following about patience and its importance in a healthy
spirituality.
“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.
Excerpts of Teilhard's Hearts on Fire taken from http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/8078/prayer-of-theilhard-de-chardin/“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.”
Grace
and Peace,
Fr. Tony+
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