Tuesday of the second week of Advent: Accepting Incompleteness
Nature
Heartsong from Inner Music
By Madeleine Doherty (CD1 track 2)
Instrumental harp music based on Madeline's meditations. www.madeleinedoherty.ie
Shen Khar Venakhi from Crux Vocal Ensemble
By Crux Vocal Ensemble
Crux is a gathering of voices on the Atlantic fringe of Europe in the historic city of Dublin. www.cruxvocalensemble.com
No music playing
Tuesday of the second week of Advent: Accepting Incompleteness
Let my heart rejoice and be glad in this time of prayer. Remind me often of the great blessings You have bestowed on me, oh my God.
James 5:7-8
Be patient, therefore, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.
The Jesuit priest, scientist, and mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, urged the importance of patience in the following words (from Hearts on Fire: Praying with Jesuits, edited by Michael Harper, 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.
Lord, in this period of reflection, help me make Teilhard’s prayer my own
Glory to you, Father, source of all being,
to you, Jesus, Word made flesh,
to you Holy Spirit, Comforter,
as it was before time began,
is now and shall be into the future.
Amen.