Every person is a pilgrim—a “work in progress.” Josef Rodriguez, SJ, reflects on how we can never forget that God will finish the good work he began in us. Based on the readings for the Second Sunday of Advent.
“I’m a work-in-progress!”
Hi, I’m Josef Rodriguez, and this is my One-Minute Reflection.
Paul tells the Philippians that God will continue to complete the good work that God has begun in them. He looked at life as one long period of development. St. Ignatius of Loyola viewed life as a pilgrimage.
A lesson that I still carry with me from my novice pilgrimage is that regardless of how much I worry about where I’m going next, Divine Providence ultimately gets me to where I need to be.
We can be so worried about finally “getting there.” We view ourselves as “works in progress,” and rightly so. But we forget that we are God’s work in progress more than our own. As Pierre Teillhard de Chardin says, “Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.”
During this time of Advent, when Baby Jesus is in the last days of his development, we accompany him with patience in our own progress.
