As a professor, I always try to grade assignments and get them back to the students within two to three days, because I know that they want to be able to get their grades and then reevaluate: an “A” tells them everything is good; a “C” tells them that they need to put more time and energy into working for the class. I try to get those grades back as quickly as possible because I sympathize with my students: I often wish I could get some graded feedback on the tasks of my own life. Wouldn’t it be nice if God sent grades down from Heaven? What a relief it would be to know that you are on track for an eternal “A,” or what a needed kick in the pants it would be to know right now that your spiritual efforts were only “C” worthy. But God doesn’t send down grades, so we never really know how well we are succeeding at the most important task of our whole lives. How is it that God doesn’t know the foundational value of regular evaluation and feedback?
When God does things that are frustrating or don’t seem to make sense, we have found an opportunity to see the truth of Mother Seton’s words, “Patience and submission are the only way to gain the blessings of Heaven.”
The reality is that most students are anxious to get graded feedback because they want to try the path of less work first and add more work only if the grades show they need to. And so, it turns out that graded feedback enables a certain kind of laziness, a mentality of “I will only do what is necessary, but never more.” In our lives as Christ’s followers, we are forced to be patient because the only grade we will get is at the end of our lives. Submitting to this lack of feedback and patiently awaiting the moment of final grading, as Mother Seton tells us to do, is not a matter of doing nothing. Quite the opposite. God’s “failure” to give us progress reports is his way of refusing to allow us the spiritual laziness of always trying to put in whatever minimal effort gets us the spiritual “A.” Since none of us will ever know if we are doing enough—praying enough, caring enough, being patient, humble, and kind enough—we must always strive to see if tomorrow we can do just a little bit more and be just a little bit better.
If, God willing, we will gain the blessings of Heaven, it will not be because we know already that we are worthy of it. Instead, we will gain the blessings of Heaven precisely because we do not know if we are worthy, and, as we patiently await the one and only evaluation that truly matters, we will hold nothing back in dedicating ourselves to the goal of receiving that long awaited “A.”
