12

Holy Patience

FEW virtues bear such unequivocal witness to the fact that one’s life is based no longer on one’s own nature but on Christ, who imparts to us His divine life in holy Baptism, as does true patience, From the mysterious words of Our Lord, “In your patience you shall possess your souls” (Luke 21:19), we may glean an initial knowledge of the greatness and significance of this virtue.

     Indolence is not the same as Christian patience

Here, again, let us do away at once with a possible misconception. Christian patience has nothing in common with a phlegmatic temperament and the sluggish rhythm of life such a temperament produces. There exists a kind of people who never grow impatient and are always willing to wait—either because they need much time for everything themselves and reveal a slow pace in all their vital manifestations, or else because nothing can rouse them from their indolence nor evoke on their part any but dull and spiritless reactions.

This natural disposition is not, as such, of any moral, let alone supernatural value; rather, specifically speaking, it must be considered a deficiency. In certain situations, it may of course prove to be comfortable and helpful; but frequently it will act as a heavy impediment inasmuch as it renders all wakefulness, ardent seal or bold determination difficult of attainment.

Such a disposition of pseudo-patience may be a symptom of deficient vitality; or again, it may flow from a certain form of self-contained animal vitality unresponsive to all stimuli of a higher order. We are thinking of that signally healthy type of persons who, owing to a dull, bovine, but all the more solid vitality, are unlikely ever to lose their temper, and in their almost vegetative calmness face the impact of all things with brazen equanimity. By virtue of their robust nerves and a false sense of security, they preserve the consciousness of having the situation well in hand even though the results they have been aiming at take long to appear; hence, they are able to wait without lapsing into impatience.

     Stoic indifference is not the same as Christian patience

Nor should Christian patience be confused, either, with that equipoise based on intellectual discipline and a kind of natural asceticism which we know to be a specific ideal of Stoic philosophy. The Stoic endeavors to acquire an artificial disinterestedness in regard to all things, thanks to which nothing can any longer perturb his composure. His aim in so doing is to safeguard his sovereignty amidst all situations; for he deems it inconsistent with his dignity to be agitated and buffeted about by the blows of fate. It is, we may well say, repugnant to his pride that he should admit his infirmity and his creaturely dependence on a higher power.

The reason why he exhibits no sign of impatience is that there is no longer anything that can move him deeply or touch him to the quick, no object to which he would abandon himself with his inmost being. His patience, then, is merely a manifestation of his indifference to all things except his own imperturbability—of his apathy and ataraxy, as the Greek names go—which of necessity also implies a loss of the response to values.

It is a purely negative accomplishment bought at the cost of his renunciation of a most necessary virtue: to wit, an ardent zeal for the victory of the good. On no such foundations can we base our obedience to the call implicit in the words: “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.” Of course, he who has no vital interest in anything can well afford to wait placidly; he is unlikely ever to lose his temper, ever to press onward tumultuously, ever to grow impatient.

     Buddhist placidity is not the same as Christian patience

Another attitude that bears an outward resemblance to true patience but is essentially distinct from it is typified by the Buddhist mood of an even-tempered endurance in regard to all that comes to pass. This, too, implies a capacity for waiting indefinitely without falling into impatience.

What we are faced with here is not the psychological device for ego protection that the Stoa commends under the label of ataraxy. it is a fundamentally different attitude to the world of real things, and hence to that eminent and constitutive aspect of natural reality, the reality of time as such. To the Buddhist, all real being is mere appearance, devoid of true substantiality. His attitude, therefore, is that of detached contemplation of reality, dispensed from all obligations of action and accomplishment.

This position of a pure spectator, unfavorable to all activity and tension—in fact involving an aversion to all endeavors at realizing a purpose—precludes the very basis on which the virtue of true patience might unfold. Certainly it also keeps out impatience in the sense, that is, of uprooting the common presupposition (the importance of reality and of tasks ordained to its shaping) for the actualization of both impatience and patience, just as a lunatic can no longer commit any sin but can no longer display any virtue either.

In other words, the Buddhist doctrine eliminates the problem of patience and impatience, and that in a much more formal sense even than does Stoicism. For, whereas the Stoic philosophy bears upon our attitude towards things merely insofar as they affect our state of mind, the Buddhist modifies our basic relation to the world of reality and calls in question our general obligation to do our part within its framework.

     Patience is opposed to petulance and to inconstancy

Passing, now, to the description of true Christian patience, we must at once signalize two distinct dimensions in which it unfolds. We mean that patience is opposed to two moral defects: first, to impatience in the sense of petulancy or a quarrelsome and violent behavior; secondly, to fickleness and inconstancy: the tendency soon to desist from a purpose if its realization seems to require a long period of time.

Patience in the sense of an antithesis to this last-named defect is closely related to constancy; yet, it should be noted that constancy comprises other elements besides patience. Lack of constancy may be conditioned by the lack of patience; but it may also come from superficiality, spiritual discontinuity, mere suggestibility or lack of selflessness (such as is found in insufficient love and zeal). He who is wanting in constancy does not necessarily lack patience; but whoever possesses constancy also possesses patience in the latter sense.

Furthermore, patience may reveal varying shades according to the different classes of good to whose pursuit it refers. We must use different criteria in discussing patience according as the good we are desirous of (without being able to obtain it immediately) attracts us as something that just happens to be agreeable to us in some respect, or as something that constitutes an objective good for us, or as something valuable in itself, or again, finally, as something that actually bears upon the realization of the kingdom of God.

     Impatience is a form of self-indulgence

Insofar as the good we are pursuing belongs to the category of what is agreeable or objectively beneficial to us, it will be a question of that kind of patience in which the element of constancy is less stressed. Suppose we are longing for some legitimate good for ourselves: if its acquisition is rendered difficult by certain obstacles (unforeseen ones, in particular) or is delayed too long, we are apt to become impatient. For example, if we are hungry and have to wait for our meal, or again, if we have pains and the soothing drug is not directly at hand; similarly, if we fail to receive a letter at the time we have expected it, or if somebody we are to meet takes long to appear.

Here what our impatience refers to is always the element of time. It may be the period of time that must lapse before our strongly desired good can be obtained; it may be the oppressive emptiness of a spell of waiting as such; it may be, again, the long duration of some evil, however slight.

Thus, we are likely to develop impatience if we have to endure lasting pains, a tedious conversation that tends to prolong itself, or the importunate advances of bothersome persons. In short, three varieties of evils related to time may account for this kind of impatience: delay in the securing of a coveted good; any kind of lasting unpleasantness; and the boredom inherent in pure waiting as such, especially when the thing we have to wait for may not imply a great pleasure or be highly enjoyable.

Our impatience will mostly take the form of ill humor and anger directed against somebody who is really guilty of the delay that irks us, or possibly only a scapegoat whom we arbitrarily make responsible for our vexation. But the anger of impatience need not always tempt us into reproaching or grumbling at a person; it may find some other outlet. Thus, even in this case (though the theme of constancy as against fickleness does not rank paramount here), impatience often prompts us to renounce an aim because we cannot secure it expeditiously.

This form of impatience can be subsumed under the head of letting ourselves go. In investigating the deeper roots of this inward disharmony and rebellion, we shall have to distinguish a threefold motivation which underlies it.

     Impatience springing from overestimation of goods or evils

First—the interest we take in the given aim we are pursuing is apt to be an inordinate one. It dominates us too strongly and too exclusively, so much so that it may push aside our interest in what legitimately demands our primary and invariable attention. The impetuous dynamism of certain trivial and transitory or intermittent interests overlies in an inordinate fashion our awareness of God, of our fellow man, or of other high values.

Our impatience, then, is a sign that we are still too much absorbed in outward concerns and momentary aims; that they are too important to us and at a given period occupy our field of attention too extensively. It is a sign that we have not yet arrived at the right gradation of our interests, which should take into account the objective hierarchy of values. Such is the case, particularly, insofar as our impatience corresponds to our endeavor to secure something agreeable or a practical necessity of the moment.

If, on the other hand, it is a question of enduring some outward evil (be it bodily pain, illness, annoyance or just boredom), our impatience betrays on our part too strong a reference to what gratifies and what is contrary to our inclinations, a certain softness and lack of distance in regard to our body or to the impact of disagreeable sensations as such. A kind of inner servitude, too, is implicit therein; a false reliance upon an imaginary normal situation exempt from evils, which we take to be self-evidently due to us to the point of making ourselves dependent upon it. Hence, whenever an evil, as is inevitable, befalls us, it cannot but arrest our attention wholly and turn it away from the higher values that approach and address us—from the love, for example, which other persons manifest for us, or above all, from God, who, we know, means to tell us something even by the evils which He permits to visit us.

In sum, the impatience we have in mind here expresses an automatism of self-indulgence, an attitude of uncontrolled allegiance to one’s own nature. It signifies that one has not yet succeeded in establishing that distance between one’s responsible self and one’s unredeemed nature with the desires and impulses it harbors, which is a basic aim of all ascetical practice.

The Christian, however, must never abandon himself to the autonomous pull of his nature. Though he may pursue all kinds of licit objects with intensity, he must never install such a pursuit, as it were, in sovereign omnipotence. He must keep it always dependent on the sanction of his central personality and confront it with the rest of his valid interests—particularly, his tasks and duties. Yet, most people are prone to obey the impulse of their nature without submitting it to any control, on certain points at least: whenever, notably, the object pursued is not by itself illicit or fraught with sinful implications.

     Impatience rooted in an illegitimate sovereignty of self

But there is a second root of the impatience we are now dealing with. A certain type of persons—who may be described as impatient par excellence—are apt to lose their temper not merely when obliged to wait for the realization of an object they passionately desire, but whenever they face a delay in the attainment of an aim they have once set up, even if that aim is a neutral or unimportant one as far as its actual content goes. They allow themselves unreservedly to be swayed by the weight which the thing they have proposed as an aim acquires simply on the strength of having been so proposed. The very failure of this chosen aim to find immediate accomplishment strikes them, in their obstinacy and arrogance, as an insupportable affront.

This unlimited subserviency to their own nature also creates in them an egocentric attitude, for they ascribe to any pursuit they are engaged in an importance over and above everything else. They recklessly disregard other people’s needs.

This second source of impatience, then, lies in one’s attribution of an unrestrained formal sovereignty to one’s nature. That is why typically impatient persons are likely to manifest such a self-indulgence and lack of discipline not merely when they have to endure a strong pain or the frustration of a violent desire, but whenever any purpose of theirs suffers a delay in its realization.

Our impatience is a mark that we have quit the status of habitare secum, and are swimming with the current of a predominant impulse or the formal automatism of our nature. There is an analogy with a fit of anger in this type of self-importance, or even more closely, with an act of frivolous swearing and cursing. We then, giving free rein to impatience, stake, as it were, everything on one card and give away our whole person without the sanction of our central and responsible self.

In other words, and viewed from a different aspect, we sever the fundamental link with God that defines the constitution of our life as a creature. This second factor—the tendency to erect any purpose, once it has been set up, into a formal absolute—is more characteristic of impatience than is the first-named one, the inordinate stress attached to certain of our pursuits, for it bears a direct relation to our scorn for time as a dimension of objective reality independent of our will.

     Impatience rooted in a prideful denial of our creatureliness

Hence, we may proceed immediately to the third and most basic factor of impatience: the assumption of a false position of supremacy above the universe, the non-recognition of one’s own creatureliness, limitation, and finiteness. Thus illegitimately arrogating to himself a status of sovereignty, the subject clings to the illusion of being a lord over time. He would extricate himself from all dependence on the causae secundae, on the order and interaction of created causes. The impatient man experiences any obstacle to the progress of his pursuits as an injurious interference. He revolts at the check placed on human volition by the interval of time that must lapse between conceiving and attaining a purpose, and would conjure up the intended effect by a mere fiat—the likeness of a divine command.

Herein lies the primary and deepest sinfulness of impatience. It contains an act of hybris: an illusory negation of our human situation and the substitution of a supra-human position of mastery, For the givenness of time, with the ineluctability of waiting it involves, represents a specific limitation of our creaturely existence on earth. We are faced with a course of happening, a sequence of events in time, which is not of our making and which we cannot alter except within certain rather closely set bounds. We may not subvert its essential structure.

We have to reckon with a space of time interpolating itself between our volitive decision, and the fulfillment of our purpose, and accept it as a reality imposed by God.

The impatient man insists on ignoring this reality; he behaves as though it were in his power to make the trees grow more quickly and the earth revolve more quickly around the sun. Impatience renders us hard, unkind, masterful, and in some circumstances, violent. It always implies a loss of depth.

     Impatience differs from our legitimate deep yearning for the realization of a noble good

It should on no account be confused, therefore, with a consuming desire or a feverish yearning as such; with the deep tension of the soul towards a noble good, which may cause us to live through the minutes of waiting as though they were hours. Our fiery inward motion towards a high aim ardently longed for—such as seeing again a dearly beloved person after a long separation, embarking on a beautiful journey which fills us with magic anticipations, or the inception of a gratifying work which our mind has been passionately engaged in planning—should be well distinguished from impatience proper.

To be sure, even such a fine aspiration must never dominate us to the degree of a complete possession. We must-always place everything in the hands of God—“Not as I will but as Thou wilt.” But this inward tension towards a high good is something valuable by itself; it lacks the distinctive marks of impatience proper—it does not generate anger, scowling indignation, masterful rebelliousness. It should—it can—be informed and transfigured by an attitude of serene humility which keeps us constantly aware of the truth that the fulfillment of any aim of man is a gift of God.

This kind of tension differs from impatience proper by the fact, also, that it presupposes a high good as its object, whereas the impatience we have in mind mostly refers to trivial goods. Moreover, the former’s sphere of objects includes goods whose realization is entirely independent of ourselves, whereas the latter bears more generally on such goods as we can at least help to bring about.

What irritates an impatient person is, above all, the too sluggish effect of his orders, his actions, his attempts to influence men’s behavior or the development of a situation. His ill temper expresses a revolt against the relative and limited character of his effectiveness.

The foregoing analysis of impatience may help us now to describe the virtue of Christian patience, insofar as it refers to the securing of pleasurable goods or ego gratifications as such, to the endurance of pains or boredom, or again, to the attainment of legitimate natural goods of the higher kind.

     Patience respects the hierarchy of goods

The patient man, in the first place, preserves the right order in the scale of his interests. The requirements of the moment, no matter how imperious, can never displace or overshadow his attention to higher values. The intensity of his attention to a thing will not be determined by its dynamic appeal, its aggressive presence at a given moment or the noise with which it is advertised, but by the objective weight of its content. His emotional accents are ordered in a fashion proportionate to the objective order of values. He possesses a prompt readiness to bear any cross that he cannot avert from himself without injury to charity or infringement of some duty.

He has the art of waiting, and he knows that, though he might justly reproach somebody with having caused him a needless loss of time, a loveless rebuke sometimes amounts to a greater evil before God than a measure of lost time. Our neighbor’s sluggishness, too, as his other awkward and annoying traits, belongs to the things we must bear in charity.

It is because he generally refrains from letting himself go that the patient man achieves this order. He maintains himself at a certain distance from his nature and its stirrings. Even when intensely set upon attaining a purpose, he does not lapse from the status of habitare secum. He watches lest he overestimate a thing merely because he is striving after it at the moment. He is on guard against delivering himself over to the autonomous logic of that striving which tends to impart an undue weight to any chosen aim merely on the strength of its being chosen.

     Patience never pursues limited aims inordinately

In the second place, he never engages himself totally for a partial aim—which means that he never becomes blind to the consideration he owes to others, restricting his vision to himself and his own affairs as an exclusive whole. He knows that such a total engagement is illicit; that God demands of us a confrontation of all things with Him and with one another. Still less would he push such a total engagement to its extreme limit, at the cost of sacrificing even his own important concerns of another order. He would not stake everything on a card, to the point of dissolving his fundamental nexus with God—as the Flying Dutchman who, impatient to round a cape more rapidly, wagers his soul thereon; or as Esau who sells his birthright for a mess of pottage.

Though we are at liberty, and in certain cases, in duty bound to do everything in our power to attain a legitimate purpose, no obstacle and no ill-success must ever be allowed to throw us off our balance. The true Christian is determined to preserve in all circumstances his open and devoted attitude to God: that basic constitution of his soul which guards him against ever losing hold of the habitare secum; for he is well aware that he cannot remain in communion with God except in such a state of composure and self-possession.

     Patience recognizes the sovereignty of God over time

Above all, the true Christian never pretends to a false position of supremacy over the universe. Indeed, Christian patience issues from religio: the consciousness of being a creature of God, whose property we are, without whom we can achieve nothing, and in whose hands all our endeavors, actions, and accomplishments are placed. The true Christian assents to his creaturely dependence on God, and consciously derives from it the informing principle of his life. “My days are in Thy hands” (Ps. 30:16).

He knows that God is also the Lord over Time; that He has assigned to the course of events its temporal extension; that we must recognize the interval of time that separates the taking of a decision from the reaching of the intended aim as a reality willed by God: “All things have their season: and in their times all things pass under heaven” (Eccles. 3:1).

He loathes the hybris which lies in the pretension to override the autonomous operation of the causae secundae and to secure effects by a mere fiat. That is why patience in this first and inferior sense, too, is an integral component of a life centered in Christ. It contains a specific response to the omnipotence of God and to our absolute dependence on Him, as well as an acceptance of our creaturely finiteness. He who has patience abides by the Truth; the impatient man, posing at least in a partial sense as though he were God, submits to the bondage of the illusions of pride.

     Patience is appropriate even when pursuing high goods

The second form of patience belongs to a much higher level. It refers to the realization of things valuable in themselves, and in particular, the spreading of the kingdom of God. It is in this context, again, that the second dimension of patience—that which makes it akin to constancy and perseverance—assumes its full significance. Here it is a question of intrinsically noble and all-important aims, whose furtherance we ought to seek with impetuous zeal. The moral advancement of ourselves and of others, the triumph of justice, the dissemination of the true Faith, the conversion and the progress of a soul specially entrusted to our care—these, to be sure, are things for which we must yearn in our every fiber and strive after with our whole being; our concern for these can never be too intense.

Woe to those who can take but a moderate and conditional interest in these aims. With a burning eagerness should we engage in their service; for “the kingdom of God suffers violence.” So far as these things are concerned, it would be wrong of us to take our time. Rather we should emulate the response of St. Matthew the Apostle to the inexorable call, Sequere me: “Jesus . . . saw a man sitting in the customhouse, named Matthew; and he saith to him: Follow me. And he arose up and followed him” (Matt. 9:9).

Thus, too, did St. Peter and St. Andrew leave their fishing nets and all their work and, without glancing back, follow Christ. No less immediate and wholehearted was the response of St. Anthony, who, upon hearing the words of the Gospel, at once went to live as a hermit in the desert. No less eager and integral, many centuries later, was the response of St. Francis of Assisi.

And yet, even in this zeal, holy patience is absolutely necessary, and an essential part of holiness. For holy patience means our response to the truth that it is not we but God alone who determines the proper day and hour for the fruitful performance of certain actions and even more exclusively, the ripening of our seed and the harvest of our labors.

     The rapidity of our immediate response may sometimes differ in our inward dedication and our outward actions

A keen distinction must be made between our inward dedication to God and to His kingdom in ourselves and in others, and our action proper (on ourselves and on others). The call of God once perceived, our response cannot follow quickly enough. We should immediately and unconditionally respond to the sequere me, giving ourselves to God without demur or reserve as did Mary; “Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to thy word.” All hesitation here would be a perilous error.

But this unhampered inward dedication to God does not by itself involve the performance of all single acts which it entails in a general and essential sense. Particularly does this caution apply to extrinsic and public action, that is, the works of the apostolate.

Certain saints—among them, as we have seen, St. Francis and St. Anthony the hermit—immediately drew the full consequences from their conversion. But this is a great privilege of grace. Our sense of discretion must enlighten us about whether we may take the decisive step with its full implications at once, or had better remain for a period in inward maturing. There exists a danger of skipping over necessary stages.

Sometimes it also happens that a sincere but not so highly privileged Christian, instead of awaiting a more unmistakable and concrete call of God, overreaches himself in a kind of natural enthusiasm and anticipates certain acts fraught with grave obligations, without being able to posit them with a true inward decisiveness. Many converts immediately want to enter a religious Order, though they lack actual vocation and have not measured the whole significance of such an enhanced dedication to God.

The Church knows this danger; that is why she requires an adequate interval of inner maturing for all great steps in religious life. Unless a particular and a rare grace makes up for it, man needs an appropriate space of time for all deep and great things.

The attitudes deep things require cannot, in general, attain their complete validity and reality except after a period of organic development, whose length varies greatly according to each case. For every deep, fateful word there is a fullness of time in which alone it can be legitimately and fruitfully spoken. Anticipate it hastily by acting without discretion, and your utterance of it will be shadowy, devoid of maturity, and invalid. Again, let the “destined hour” pass unused, and you will no longer be able to speak that word except in an empty and purely formal fashion.

It is touching to read how the chamberlain in the Acts of the Apostles hastens to be baptized by the deacon Philip; for him, thanks to a special grace of God, the destined hour—the fullness of time—was at hand there and then. But the Church by no means modelled her general practice in admitting converts upon these cases, recorded in apostolic times, of an instantaneous and definitive conversion.

On the contrary, in the first centuries she imposed on the catechumens a long course of preparation through the successive stages of which they had to pass before being admitted to Baptism. Even today, every adult baptism must be preceded by a certain period of instruction and maturing. As regards the preparation for monastic life, the Church only allows the taking of temporary vows at first; final vows require a preparatory stage. Nor does she admit a definitive private vow of virginity without an antecedent temporary one. Thus, in forming these decisive resolutions concerning our inner and personal life, too, we must exercise holy patience, and accord time the significance in human affairs with which God has invested it.

     Evangelization also calls for patience

Even more does the same caution apply to the apostolate or our activity devoted to the winning of other people’s souls. Anxious as we may be at once to communicate the Truth we have unmeritedly received and to light up other souls with the fire Christ has kindled in ours, we must always bear in mind that we ourselves cannot fruitfully sow before the divine seed has unfolded to a certain degree in our own souls—which, again, means a period of maturing.

Undoubtedly a special grace of God may overrule this, too; but generally speaking, a time of silence must precede the time to speak. St, Paul, after his conversion, lived in silence for several years before he started his work. Nay, the Savior Himself only began His public activity after thirty years of complete privacy; not that He, in whom the fullness of Divinity resides, needed a process of maturing: but He chose to give us an example of the rhythm which God has imposed on human life.

Notwithstanding all our zeal, then, we must observe the obligation of patience even as workers in the vineyard of the Lord. With careful discretion we must try to perceive the striking of God’s own hour for our work to start in His vineyard rather than insist, in a spirit of natural enthusiasm and impatience, on determining it by ourselves. Suppose we are animated by a glowing zeal: if, at the same time, we have patience, we may be infallibly sure that we no longer live by our nature but by a supernatural principle of life.

To be sure, we are not in all circumstances obliged to make the time of our action dependent on the degree of receptivity we may suppose to exist in the souls we deal with. There are cases when, with St. Paul, we must set forth the truth opportune, importune (“in season, out of season”). Yet, even then, we are not relieved of the duty of patience; for St. Paul says further; “Reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine” (2 Tim. 4:2).

Still more is patience our duty in regard to the blossoming of the seed which we are allowed to sow in the Lord’s vineyard. As Pascal wrote, “Christ wills us to fight with Him, not to conquer with Him.” We must be humble enough to renounce any pretension to determine ourselves the time of the harvest. While doing everything in our power to hasten the extension of the kingdom of God for which we are working, we must let God alone decide when He shall grant it.

Even in cases when our business concerns some object eminently pleasing to God, which indeed we ought to pursue with consuming zeal, we must not cease saying, “Not as I will but as Thou wilt.” At the start of his activity, St. Dominic lived for four years among the Albigensian heretics without converting a single one of them. Yet, he became neither impatient nor discouraged; he did not give up his effort. By the end of his life, he and his sons had converted sixty thousand people. It is in this higher sphere that the second dimension of patience—the aspect of perseverance and indefatigable zeal—reveals its full importance.

     Holy patience frees zeal from impatience

Once more, we encounter here the fact, repeatedly stressed in the foregoing pages, of an organic mutual union on the supernatural plane between aspects apparently antithetic. The nearer we draw to God, the more we see develop in ourselves a coincidentia oppositorum—a reconciliation between two equally valid demands which seem to imply an opposition or at least a tension.

It is only on a basis derived from Christ that we can achieve an accord between these two attitudes: hunger and thirst after justice and holy patience. In the natural framework, zeal appears inseparable from impatience.

But the saints accomplish the miracle: on the one hand, they say with the Apostle of the Gentiles, “The love of Christ presseth us,” and live up to the message of Christ, “I am come to cast fire on the earth. And what will I, but that it be kindled?” (Luke 12:49); on the other hand, they await in holy patience and inward peace the time when God shall choose to manifest the fruits of their labors.

What holy patience expresses is a living recognition of the truth that the Lord God alone can bring forth the fruit; that, even in this highest sphere, man—with whatever blessings of grace—can do no more than disseminate the seed he has received from God, thus establishing the conditions for the operation of grace in his fellow man’s soul. As St. Paul puts it: “I have planted, Apollo watered: but God gave the increase” (1 Cor. 3:6).

     Holy patience is an ultimate act of surrender to God

Holy patience, seen from another angle, embodies an ultimate act of our surrender to God, and therefore a status of consummate self-possession. For only in the measure that we have surrendered our inmost being to God do we possess ourselves. He who has holy patience has accomplished the process of dying unto himself, and entered the peace of Christ which “surpassed! all understanding.” “In your patience you shall possess your souls” (Luke 21:19).

In holy patience, we become children of Him who with inconceivable longanimity “maketh his sun to rise upon the good and bad and raineth upon the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45) and who does not weed out the cockle but sorts the chaff from the wheat at the harvest only.

In this sense, holy patience may be described as a sister of wisdom and of contemplation. As these virtues cause us to consider and appreciate everything in a perspective centered on God, thus evoking to the full the beauty and depth of all things, so also in the attitude of patience we emphatically let God act, thus allowing all things to unfold from above—as proceeding from their Origin—and by so experiencing their operation again render to God what is God’s.

     Holy patience is the fruit of faith, hope, and charity

Holy patience is a fruit of faith, hope and charity. Faith teaches us that God the universal Lord is also the Lord of Time; that He alone appoints the proper hour to everything; that we must place the success of all endeavors, including such as are eminently pleasing to Him, in His hands; that we must believe in the possibility of success though no pledge of it be visible to the human eye; and that consequently we must labor for the kingdom of God whatever the odds seem to be.

Hope keeps us from getting discouraged in spite of all failures and all delays in achieving success and expects “against hope” everything from the goodness of Him “with whom nothing is impossible.” Charity impels us to love God and His holy will above everything, and prevents us from expostulating with Him or renouncing our work in His vineyard on account of any defeat sustained. Particularly is patience an offspring of charity insofar as it is assimilable to constancy and perseverance—an offspring of the charity, that is, which in St. Paul’s words “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” (1 Cor. 13:7).

The fruits of holy patience, finally, are meekness and that inner peace of Christ “which the world cannot give.” Patience, then, is closely related to the very flower and perfume of Christian life.

     Holy patience acknowledges man’s creaturely status

It constitutes one of the basic traits that distinguish a true Christian in statu viae, in the sense even that it connotes in a twofold fashion a specific reference to the character of earthly existence as a status viae—a journey destined to lead us to our ultimate goal. First, it expresses our assent to our creaturely and finite condition, and more particularly, our response to the significance of time as an aspect of the divine plan of creation, as an essential constituent of the status viae, the world of “that which passes” in contradistinction to eternity. Second, patience represents a basic condition for winning through to our eternal salvation, since it implies a capacity for waiting without despairing of our effort for the kingdom of God, an attitude of perseverance in the midst of all obstacles and all sufferings, an intrepid hope for victory, and a humble but sustained preparation for eternity.

Not only is patience an indispensable virtue; beyond that, it discloses a formal apprehension of the basic condition of status viae and of the relation between terrestrial life and eternal life. Thus are the mysterious words of Our Lord on patience related to these others: “He that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved” (Matt. 24:13).

He alone who possesses patience—encompassed by disappointments, worn down by defeats, painfully aware of the narrowness of the road to salvation—can yet give proof of the constancy demanded by God, and hold on to the one thing necessary with a devotion not only unflagging but ever increasing. In him alone can the hunger and thirst after justice unquenchable on earth—which is Christ Himself—and the undying fire that the Lord came down to kindle, burn throughout his entire life. Only the patient man, who lives by Christ, can persevere unto the end: “In your patience you shall possess your souls” (Luke 21:19).