You are afraid of the length of this trial… But it is already almost at an end, and while you lament, time flows, which is so precious with its pains and its joys. This is what I want to repeat to you this evening for the umpteenth time, hoping that, God willing, I will remind you of it for the umpteenth + first time. For this, I often pray and plead earnestly with God to allow us to collaborate in His kingdom and help us both to love it better.
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ /1881–1955/, letter from the front, to his cousin, September 20, 1915;
quoted from the book Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Birth of Thinking. Letters 1914–1919, Malvern 2021)
