Elizabeth Thoman Memorial Announcement, Program, Prayer

By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 

Above all trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally
Impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We would 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 might take a very long time. 

And so 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 take 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 guiding you, 
And accept the anxiety of
Feeling yourself in suspense
and incomplete.