But if God intervenes to set our hearts aside, to forcefully incline the desire for happiness and mutual love that He has awakened in us during the happy years of youth towards Himself – then we should not complain. Do not be angry with our Lord, if He wishes to make you more than just an “ordinary Christian.” Given that your work is to have a great reach, it must spring from a heart that has suffered: this is the law, in its essence sweet… When you feel sad, paralyzed, please bow down and surrender. Bow down by offering God your life, which seems to you to be shattered by circumstances; what honor can be more beautiful than this loving renunciation of what we could have been!... Surrender, lose yourself blindly in trust in our Lord, who wants to make you worthy of Himself. And He will succeed, even if you have to remain in darkness until the end, as long as you hold His hand, tighter the more disappointed and sad you become.
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ /1881–1955/, letter from the front, to his cousin, August 22, 1915;
quoted from the book Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Birth of Thought. Letters 1914–1919, Malvern 2021)
