Patience

As a boy, whenever I was nagging my mom for something that just didn’t seem to be coming to me as quickly as I though it should, her response was, “Remember, patience is a virtue.”

Today, we live in a culture which treats patience as a vice.  We cannot wait for anything to be done without working on at least one or two other things.  We check our email while eating lunch at the desk and listening to music on the iPod while responding to texts on the iPhone.  Smelling the roses is out; multitasking is in.

We turn on the TV and are bombarded with the concept that our lives cannot be complete until we have the latest this or the latest that.  Fortunately, we can buy it NOW.  No money, no problem!  Charge it.  Stores are closed, no problem!  Go to the web or call the 800-number NOW!  Operators are standing by.  What are you waiting for?  This is a limited time offer.  Your very happiness depends on your response.  Act now or you lose.

As is true in so many things, Scripture and our faith give us a much different message.  Patience, Paul tells us, is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22).  It is closely tied to the theological virtue of hope, our confidence that God’s will is directed to the salvation of all of his creation, despite the apparent setbacks and obvious pains that we experience living in a time of already, but not yet.

The fruit of patience allows us to bear these pains and setbacks with the mercy and love which Jesus showed to those who opposed him, even to those who killed him.   Again, Paul reminds us that this patience characterizes the love that is the foundation of our lives as Christians, for love is patient, love is kind (1 Cor 13:4). 

Yet we easily lapse into impatience as our knowledge of God’s will is never completely perfect.  Oftentimes, like the blind man in today’s passage, our sight is a bit fuzzy, only seeing “people like trees walking.” (Mk 8:22-26)  Now, we see in a mirror, dimly, not as we shall see when we are face to face with God (1 Cor 13:12).

We are also hampered by our human sense of limited time, while God operates above and beyond time.  As the blind man does today, we must wait patiently for God to work out his plan in our lives.  We remember, as the psalmist and St. Peter tell us, that for God, a thousand years is like a single day (Ps 90:4, 2 Pt 3:8).

Outside the walls of this church, the maelstrom of daily life awaits us...the strident cries for more and more, for faster and faster, for now, now, now.  What can we do?  You have already taken a great step.  You’ve carved out time in your day for communion with God, communion with each other as church.

How else can we separate ourselves from the maelstrom?

Our readings today give us a clue.  James insists that we be “doers of the word and not just hearers…one who acts…cares for widow and orphans in their affliction” (Jas 1:19-27).  In Psalm 15, we are asked to climb the mountain of the Lord, not harming our fellow man, not taking up reproach against our neighbor, walking blamelessly and doing justice.

In all these things, simple acts of kindness and mercy and justice, we can practice the patience that God has for each of us; the patience that Jesus demonstrated for us by his life and by his death; the patience that is the fruit of following the Spirit who guides us and dwells in us.  And with that patience, we find true happiness, true satisfaction, true joy.

Don’t worry.  Be patient.  Be happy.