Patience

Benedicamus Domino!

I promised you an entry about patience. Given the previous few entries which have talked about the Christian life as being a dynamic one, where does the notion of patient endurance come in? Everyone talks about it: Christ, St. Paul, all the biggies! Treatises have been written on the need for patience. Tales have been told about how patience can lead to reward. So what does this mean? Are we simply to accept life for what it is, to sit quietly and let life pass us by? The answer, of course, is both yes and no.

Yes, there is a certain amount of acceptance needed if we are to live in this crazy world and still retain some sanity. The world is nuts and does not follow any real order that we can see. This is what we have to accept, but what we also have to remember is that it is our own limited vision which cannot see the order, the movement behind all movement, the dynamic activity of God in and around our world and our universe. So, patience must be cultivated: patience with ourselves, patience with our neighbours, and patience with God.

Today, we want everything yesterday. We want things to come to us instantly. We feel entitled to this. However, I think that patience if cultivated correctly can shift this sense of entitlement away and replace it with an abiding certainty of God's supremacy in our lives.

So what then is patience? Is patience simply waiting without complaint? No, I think it's more active than this. Patience is self-mastery. Patience is a willingness to forgive someone over and over and over again and still love them. Patience, however, is not simply being a doormat, because along with patience must come a respect for each human being, a true sense of human dignity, because however broken and fallen we all may be, we have been made in God's image. So, sometimes, though we are the most patient people imaginable, a choice must be made for our own selves. I just want to make it clear that I'm not advocating for powerlessness in bad situations.

What I am saying is that patience is a very courageous thing to have. It stands in the face of utter insanity and doesn't let that insanity touch it. It looks at the world in which we live and it says: "I live in hope!" Its source is that Divine Discontent about which I wrote in my last entry. It does not deaden true desire, but it calms all the false frettings of the ego so that true desire, divine desire can shine forth. It is something which I need to cultivate in my own life, and it is something which can actually be a very powerful source of strength. Like water, patience can be gentle and soft or it can sweep you off your feet. Sometimes patience can prick the heart in a way that anger never can, and where anger tears, patience molds and shapes, gradually softening the heart like water gradually pounding stone into sand. It is a necessary ingredient of charity or love, and that is the end and aim of this journey toward joy: cultivating true and eucharistic love within myself and becoming a much better person than I currently am.

Deo Gratias!