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PATIENCE OBTAINS ALL THINGS

JANUARY 29, 2018

We are in our Fruit of the Spirit series. We have done love, joy, and peace. Today we are going to

look at patience. I have so much material to cover I know I’m never going to get through all of this, so

you might look for another video this week I’m just going to jump right in because we have no time to

waste.

I want to start with what patience is. It’s interesting, I think, because the word patience actually

comes from the same word that passion comes from, like the Passion of Christ. It comes from a term

that also means to suffer long or long-suffering. They both have the same root. It has to do with

endurance. Specifically when we talk about patience we mean that patience is the willing endurance

of what is painful or difficult for us. You may be naturally patient. You may be one of those people

who does not struggle with patience at all. I am not one of those people. But if you are, you probably

have a much more pleasant time of life than those who are like me and are irritable and impatient.

Patience is a good quality even apart from religious motives. It’s just a good thing. In fact, we would

probably say, and this is the title of the show, that patience is a mark of spiritual maturity. We value

the mature because they are usually far more patient than some of us. What we are doing is we are

suffering for God’s sake everything that is painful, and we are doing so willingly. That can be physical

as well as moral and spiritual suffering. We’re trying to bear patiently things like bodily pain or

poverty and sickness. When I say poverty I don’t mean complete destitution, I mean not really having

as much as you need or think you need. I don’t mean a complete destitution but a simplicity, in fact a

very pruned simplicity depending on our state in life. Sorrow, desolation, grief, loss of friends,

rudeness, calumny, misrepresentation, insults, ingratitude, injuries, persecutions, contempt, neglect,

all of that comes under the umbrella of patience if we are willing to endure it for the sake of the Lord.

We all need patience. I mentioned that it is a mark of the spiritually mature. I’m not just saying that

of my own opinion, although I think we could probably look at those people around us who are the most

patient and see that they usually are, if they are truly patient and not just spiritually or emotionally

lazy, the most mature. Sometimes we call that wisdom. We will see in a moment that the Bible sort

of approaches it in that way. I love what St. James says in his letter. He says “My brothers, count it

all joy when you fall into various trials.” I think that hysterical. We’re going to tiptoe through the

tulips in happiness when we suffer. But listen to what he says “Count it all joy when you fall into

various trials knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. Let patience have its perfect

work that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” When the Bible talksa bout the word

perfect it means complete or mature, spiritually speaking. Spiritual maturity, St. James says, proceeds

from patience. We learn patience by the things that we suffer. In fact, Jesus himself, the book of

Hebrews says, learned obedience from the things he suffered. Patience is a necessary virtue. We need

it. It’s fruit of the spirit. It’s actually part of the evidence that we have the Holy Spirit, because the

Holy Spirit will produce patience in us if we continually follow him.

Just from the root of the word, Biblical patience implies suffering, or endurance, or waiting. It’s a

determination of the will and not simply because it’s necessary. If we’re waiting because we have to

but we’re complaining and chafing the whole time then that’s not really patience. That’s you just

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having no choice. Patience is an essential Christian virtue. The Bible is full of how we are supposed to

wait patiently for God to endure without complaint all of those sufferings and wrongs and evils that we

meet with. In fact, Jesus went through those in the Beatitudes, we saw, which is where joy comes

from. The suffering of these things for God’s sake and for love of him produces both patience and joy,

and they proceed from charity. So all of it, you see, work together. That’s why we call it the fruit of

the spirit rather than the fruits, plural.

We’re going to bear patiently injustices that we can’t fix ourselves, or maybe a provocation that we

can’t remove ourselves. In the Old Testament the word patience doesn’t even occur. We have several

exhortations or wait or to expect. Hope actually implies patience too, and we’ll see in a moment that

comes from the book of Romans. St. Paul talks about that a lot in the New Testament. In the Old

Testament it’s mostly to wait with expectation or hope. We see it in Ecclesiastes and especially in the

book of Job. Job is a paragon, we say, of patience. I was actually considering that we might do a

whole study on Job. I think that would be great. That would be a great study on the whys of suffering

and how to bear up under suffering. I’ll wait to hear from you if that’s something you want to do but I

think that’s a great idea. We’ll see. In the Old Testament it’s mostly the idea of suffering for a long

time, or endurance. In the New Testament it also has that idea but we see that word translated into

the word patience quite a bit for us, or steadfastness. It’s like to plant your feet and not be moved. In

fact, it’s an act of the will, to be perfectly honest. None of us are naturally patient, especially if

you’re like me with my personality and temperament everything makes you impatient. You can see

that I’m not the slightest bit spiritually mature when I get aggravated behind the wheel of a car or in

all of those ways that are just irritations. Trust me, as I was preparing for this particular show it just

comes home to me on a daily basis that impatience is one of the most idiotic of all the faults. It gains

nothing for us. It doesn’t relieve the suffering it all, it just aggravates it because you’re dwelling on

the irritation. No one enjoys any peace as long as she is yielding to those feelings of impatience. I get

discontented and I’m miserable and uneasy. I find absolutely intolerable what I could just bear if I

would just make the effort and just suck up the irritation or suppress that response that is irritable or

angry.

People who are impatient are always in this uneasy attitude. They’re a nuisance. They’re an

aggravation to everybody around them. Nobody respects someone who is impatient. It’s actually

pretty ridiculous. When you think about how silly it is, it’s laughable. We fume over some trifle and

we get aggravated because we can’t overcome some difficulty or have our own way. People who are

impatient make a bad impression, don’t they? I have to say, I actually get tickled because nothing

makes me more aggravated than an inanimate object that will not do what it is supposed to do. Tech

problems, and listen, don’t even get me started if I’m hungry. My husband, if I start getting irritable,

always asks me “Have you eaten?” It’s that hangry word, that Snickers commercial “You’re not you

when you’re hungry.” Trust me, I am not. We all suffer with it; some of us more than others, I

probably more than anyone. That just really came home to me as I was studying for this particular

show.

We know what patience is. Why do we need patience? We know that there is no lack of opportunity to

exercise patience. On a daily basis I experience stuff that aggravates and irritates me. Patience,

then, is not simply the outward expression of irritation. It’s also the inward – the complaining, the

murmuring, the uneasiness on the inside, that provocation that makes you want to respond. It’s both

outward and inward. We’ll look at that a little more in just a few moments. The truth is we live in a

valley of tears, as the Memorare prayer says. I don’t know about you, but I find the little irritations

and the things that make me impatient harder to deal with than the big things. Maybe that’s just

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because I haven’t experienced a big enough big thing, I don’t know. I tend to rise to the occasion

when things are tragic or catastrophic or emergency situations, or even protracted. When my son had

his accident and almost died in the hospital, even that for months and months while he tried to recover

and how difficult it was for our family, I did much better with that than I tend to do with small things.

I believe that’s a mark of my temperament and personality, but also spiritual immaturity. That’s just

what it is.

Next we are going to look at divine patience, trials of patience, degrees of patience, Biblical company,

and finally the fruit of patience. Patience has great value in that it brings about spiritual maturity if

we understand what it really is. It’s not just the self-control of not acting out, it’s also the self-control

of the spiritual and emotional self-discipline of bearing the wrong and difficulty on purpose and

willingly – to willingly bear or endure some difficulty or pain or offense. I love that St. Francis de Sales

feast day was this week because he is so good at pointing out the value of the duty of our daily

vocation in whatever it is as long as it is not holy orders. We think a lot of times that holy orders or

religious orders are truly the only way to be holy, but St. Francis de Sales was so good about pointing

out that no, there is such a thing as the “sacrament of the present moment.” What he means is there

is grace available in every present moment when we offer it to God, especially in those moments of

suffering. If we do not rebel against all of those things that test our faith and test our patience, they

can save us. They cause us to grow and mature. As long as we submit to them, they are not evil or

even misfortunes, they are a great benefit to each of us. There is great value in the things we suffer.

We know that as a Catholics. We are great at suffering but we don’t do it joyfully, usually. We are

like the Pharisees, we want everybody to see our long face and know that we’re offering it all up to

Jesus, right?

I’m not talking about situations of true grief. That’s a process and we have to go through that and

work through it and yield do it in all of its stages, the anger, the denial, all of that. I know there is no

choice in grief but we’ll see the Catechism actually speaks to family very beautifully when it says in

CCC 2447. It talks about how bearing wrongs patiently is a spiritual work of mercy. Bearing those

wrongs, especially in the family, is a work of charity. Charity in itself, it says in 1825 is patient.

That’s because God himself is divinely patient. I want to look at that just a little bit, because when we

talk about the patience of God we usually use the word in a different meaning than we use it for

ourselves, and that’s unfortunate. It just means that God refrains from inflicting on the sinner the

punishment that the sinner deserves. He’s long-suffering. He does it because he is waiting to see if he

(the sinner) will repent and turn to him. He’s slow to anger and of great mercy, the Scriptures say.

It’s not that God doesn’t know whether the person will repent, it’s that he’s giving the opportunity. I

just did a little segment with Spirit Radio in the Midwest today on the book of Amos. Truly, these

prophets. It is this oppressive sense of God and his justice. He sends these prophets in to warn the

people. You better straighten up or you’re not going to like what happens. Because it’s from the Old

Testament it has this very punitive feeling to it. And it should, really. My mama used to tell me all the

time “You better be sure your sin will find you out.” That comes from the Scriptures themselves.

Galatians says so and also the Old Testament. God is not mocked. You will reap what you sow.

When the prophets offer this word of God to the people, what they are doing is revealing God’s

patience. God sends the prophets one right after the other to warn the people before the

consequences of their sins come to its fullness. He wants them to repent before they fall never to

recover again, sometimes. In fact, what we see in the people of God is that what happened. There

was a split in the kingdom and 10 of the tribes went north and 2 of the tribes went south, and the 10

tribes up north, Jeroboam the king who split the kingdom, set up his own altars and worship and

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priesthood and sacrifices. He set all that up illegitimately up north. He didn’t want the people

traveling to Jerusalem because Jerusalem was where the temple was. To keep his people, those 10

tribes, up north with him so that he could rule them and they wouldn’t desire the beauties of the

temple in the south, he set up his own sort of system of worship, and it was completely illegitimate.

I’ve talked about this before, and I do it a lot in my new study Fulfilled, I give you the whole history of

how that happens and how it was the most egregious affront to God in the entire Bible, this split. My

point is that God sent prophet after prophet after prophet to call the people to repentance so they

weren’t punished in the full measure that they truly deserved. That shows his long-suffering, his

patience. In fact, he did that all the time. It wasn’t just with his people in that split, the “Great

Apostasy” it is sometimes called, but in the flood when he prophesized the flood. When he went to

Noah and told him there was going to be a flood, he waited 100 years before it actually came to pass.

Noah was faithful. He was building that ark for 100 years, obeying God, and it had never even rained.

He was obedient to God’s word but still God waited that century to try to bring the people to

repentance. He gave them plenty of time. Saul forfeited his kingdom by his disobedience but God

waited 10 years before he carried out that sentence. What’s interesting is in that time David’s

formation was taking place. While Saul was experiencing God’s patience with his sin and while God

was giving Saul plenty of time to repent, he was already preparing Saul’s replacement. That shows the

economy of God as well in using a period of time for one thing for one person and another thing for

another person. It could actually mean that several parties are involved. Often they are, we know

those circumstances. In fact, I gave you an example with my son and his moving out last week when

we talked about peace.

This is actually a great example. When we talk about patience, God is never in a hurry. He is showing

us, then, that we should be very deliberate in everything that we do. The things that provoke us to

impatience are really a call to care and deliberation before we act. We don’t usually leave any sort of

interval of time as God does between the wrong that has been done and the punishment. We’re just

impulsive. We get mad or whatever and we commit lots of faults that we probably could avoid if we

would just wait. This is why I had peace in what was happening with my son and my husband. It really

didn’t have a whole lot to do with me. I was at fault as well but the actual confrontation occurred

between my husband and my son. It was a matter of patience for me, and truly long-suffering,

because I suffered. It was difficult not to get involved because the confrontation happened between

them. I had to refrain and wait. I had to refrain from speaking to my husband about what he should or

should not do or how he was right or wrong. We discussed it, I’m not saying we didn’t discuss it, but I

did not tell him what he needed to do. I commiserated with him when he talked about how my son

did wrong in this and this and this and we talked about how he was complicit in the whole

confrontation, but I didn’t say anything necessarily about how my husband acted. I didn’t have the

opportunity to do that with my son either because he was away, but I didn’t contact him. I didn’t send

him a text message and ask where he was. I didn’t send him an email or a phone call and say “When

are you coming home?” I didn’t do any of that. I just let it sit and ste so that everybody involved

could take the time they needed to decide what the right thing to do was. Even in me that took 5 or 6

days for me, who wasn’t involved in the actual confrontation, to see my own fault in contributing to

how my son felt. I was doing the same thing. I had fallen into that pattern of criticism and it wasn’t

working. He had outgrown that sort of correction but I was still doing it and so was his father. It was

very difficult to let that time pass without jumping back into the action.

That’s really what Jesus did during the passion. He allowed the events to take him where they would

take him. He laid himself completely into God’s hands through other people who would abuse and

eventually murder him. He did so out of that patience, that passion. God doesn’t need time for

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deliberation but he gives us that time, that patience, that long-suffering, to bring us to repentance in

order to teach us that it is necessary to be slow to act, especially in anger. God always presents

himself as waiting. That is a habit that we should really get into. When we are provoked – and I

learned this the hard way through email, you get angry and you want to flip off an email and then

you’ve done it and you can’t bring it back. When there’s a confrontation and you want to say

something and you want to jump back into the action but God says, “No, I want you to wait. I want

you to be patient.” And it is difficult.

I’d like to say a public thank you to Liz and Deborah, my latest Friends of the Show. I appreciate how

you love and lift me. That’s always my goal, to love and lift you a little bit so that you can love and

lift all you’ve been given.

Patience, we’ve seen, is tried by everything that puts an obstacle in the way of acting. Sometimes

we’re being kept waiting, maybe at a dentist or doctors office, or – and this happens to me all the time

as a homeschooler – by having to repeat over and over again some lesson to somebody who is maybe

not paying attention or just not able to grasp yet a particular lesson. Also, the wayward conduct of

our kids, by being interrupted when we’re speaking or when we have something we want to say. A

hundred similar incidents occur every single day that are trials of our patience. We are also tried by

people who misunderstand and even misrepresent us on purpose. It’s not easy to think kindly about

those kind of people. We want to either avoid them or show them how we dislike them or how upset

we are with them, and especially we really want to get them back. This is how we can gauge how well

or how badly we possess the virtue of patience, is in these situations. That’s just some things. You’ve

gone poverty, sickness, desolation, loneliness; you’ve got unappealing surroundings or jobs that aren’t

to your taste. James tells us, though, that those sufferings, although they may be minor, contribute to

our salvation. In fact, that’s a great mystery of suffering. Does God want to repay our good with evil

by sending suffering to us? Especially when we begin to really pray that we want to follow God and we

want to grow in our faith and then suddenly all hell breaks loose and everything falls to pieces, and we

feel that God has punished us for having that desire but instead he’s giving us the thing that is going to

answer that prayer. It’s very hard to see that for ourselves when we are in the middle of it because

it’s hard and painful.

If we feel sometimes that God is repaying our good with evil by sending suffering to us, we should just

look at the saints. They themselves do not believe God is punishing them. They welcome sufferings.

They like suffering. What do I mean by that? I don’t mean we’re throwing a party for all the suffering

that we experience. Just because we recognize the value in suffering doesn’t mean we like it any

better. It doesn’t make it less painful, less distasteful, anything like that, but it does make it easier to

take when we know that God is answering our prayers and that the end result is going to be the thing

we’re looking for. It’s like a doctor or surgeon who cuts the cancer out. You’re in pain and something

has been hacked away from your physical body and you undergo all of the difficulty in healing, but if

he did not take it out it would kill you. It’s sort of that same idea. In the beginning, remember, there

wasn’t any suffering. It wasn’t until the angels rebelled that pain and suffering entered the universe.

Because it is part of the payment for sin – the book of Romans says that the wages of sin is death –

every sin whether it is major or minor brings a little death with it. That is to teach us to choose

better, partly. Nebuchadnezzar, he was proud and afterward when he suffered he became humble and

submissive. You’ve got the prodigal son. You’ve got Ahab who was humbled by his suffering. “It is

good, O Lord” says King David, “that you have afflicted me. Before I was troubled I went wrong but

now I have kept your word.” Hebrews 12:11 says “Chastisement yields to those who are exorcised by

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it the peaceable fruit of justice.” It purifies the soul and it forces us to humility. It forces us to

conform to God’s will. That’s important because God’s will is the best thing for us.

We can earn more grace for ourselves and for the people around us by patiently enduring those things

that we suffer. That’s actually more valuable. If you look at Jesus, suffering willingly for love of God

is more valuable and a safer, surer means of glorifying God than it is to be zealous and to do big things.

Listen to me. Patient suffering is of more value than the biggest works. It is that powerful. Look at

Jesus’s example. The price of redemption is suffering. It’s true for us, it’s true for eternal salvation,

it’s true for daily salvation – the ways in which we continue to grow into the salvation that God has

begun in us through our baptism. We can all be proud of our actions but not very many of us are proud

of what we have to suffer. Is that not true? Sin, then, brings those consequences that we must

endure. When people say Jesus paid it all, he did pay all of the eternal consequences but he did not

pay the earthly consequences for us. If he had, we would go to heaven the moment we got “saved.”

The fact that we all still die proves that Jesus did not pay all the consequences for our sins. Suffering

does too. We have to be careful when we say Jesus paid it all to specify that he paid the eternal

consequences but not the earthly ones. The earthly ones are meant to grow us spiritually, to bring us

to maturity.

There are degrees of patience. I like to use the onion metaphor that I used in my book Unleashed. The

example that God has left for us in the Scriptures is the Old Testament he was working on the outward

behavior of his people. The first degree of patience is getting our behavior under control. Do we have

to pop back at every single person who says something offensive? In fact, the Bible says that a soft

answer turns away wrath, and I have found that it is more helpful to look my husband dead in the eye

when he says something ugly and critical then it is to get mad about it. All I have to do is look at him

and he knows he has stepped in it. It is not that I’m trying to correct him, it’s just that it’s hurtful.

He’s learning to dial that back some. He’s a very direct person anyway by personality and

temperament so that becomes very sharp if he is not careful to be sensitive to people. The first

degree of patience, then, is that outward change of behavior. Jesus says that in the beatitudes. He

says “Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart.” We saw in the beatitude that blessed are the

meek and we know that means power under control. One word for meekness, then, is patience. That

is a practical application for the very first degree of patience: Meekness or reserving the right to say

something but not doing it.

The second degree of patience involves the inward. The outward was the Old Testament, the inward

was the New Testament. The outward for patience is the behavior, the inward is the interior virtue of

patience. We can repress those external signs of being impatient but that really doesn’t have any

value in God’s sight at all unless it is a step toward the inward patience that we are really looking for.

We get this double feeling when somebody has done something to us. We’re upset and we’re hurt, and

of course there is no sin in that, but if you pay attention you also get this feeling where you want to

retaliate. You want revenge. You want to see something bad happen to them. We get bitter toward

the person who has offended us if we don’t give that over to God and allow him to grow that patience

in us. We’re tempted, then, to indulge in animosity. If we let that go too long it turns into hatred. In

order to rid ourselves of that revenge seeking or that bitterness – we may not like the person and we

can’t help that, some people are just not likable and they’re just mean – we have to resolve that no

unkind wish toward that person is going to be indulged by us. In order to get to that we have to go

straight to God with it. Pour your heart out. “Look what he did. Look what she said.” I have done

this and still do it all the time. Especially in our families, right? We should really begin all of these

practices with our families. Our families are where all of this is worked out. Heaven, Dear One, begins

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in the family. We need to control our behavior with our family members and those we love. We also

need to go to God with the interior disposition that we harbor toward them if it’s negative and give

that to God and ask the Holy Spirit to produce that fruit of patience in us.

Then there is the third degree of patience. We might have disciplined ourselves to not show the

outward signs of impatience, and maybe we have controlled the inward resentment as far as it is

voluntary and deliberate, and that is the point where we start to reap the reward of our efforts toward

patience. Then we find the fruit of that is that we see that there are certain advantages that comes

from this patience, and it is the growth of the parties. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s them. I’m thinking

mainly of my trial with my son and my husband when I talk about this. What was happening there? I

spent one day crying, one day happy that he was gone and then the next day I was crying again and the

next day I was seeing all the benefits to him not being home, and then the next day I’m seeing the

negatives to him not being at home, and it was just this back-and-forth roller coaster. At some point it

was evident throughout the whole process that this is necessary. I’m suffering, he’s suffering, my

husband’s suffering, it’s a mess, but this is necessary. We had to have a hard reboot so that we could

come to a greater respect and intimacy for each other.

That’s the third degree of patience. We understand the value of it to the point that we are willing,

happily, to suffer long for that person or people or even for us. Those who despise or persecute or

treat us badly, we thank God for those people because they are our spiritual allies I talk about in my

book Unleashed. We rejoice in having them and it’s a misfortune if we don’t have them because they

push us to spiritual maturity and growth.

One of the things that I really love as a Carmelite in formation is learning about St. Teresa of Avila.

She seems to have had a similar personality and temperament to mine, and some of the things she says

are just hysterical to me. She talks about how ill health and desolation caused her to have a real

difficulty in remaining calm and gentle in the face of people who were offensive to her. She had a

hard time resisting this impulse to speak sharply and disagreeably to people. I like that because

patience is probably my biggest obstacle to holiness. It is very, very difficult for me. I am a doer by

nature. If there is a gap some place I want to, if not fill it myself, at least tell people how to fill it.

I’m naturally very bossy. I’m learning. I am learning, and I think the situation with my son contributes

to that learning that it is best, most often, to just do nothing for a while and see what is truly the best

thing to do instead of just reacting all the time; to be proactive rather than reactive. I love her for

that purpose and many others. I love reading about her personality and temperament. As we said

earlier, all of those little ways that we gain self-mastery and self-discipline are ways of detachment.

Sometimes the readings in early church history talk about humiliation, and that’s really all it means.

It’s just those little ways in which we are humbled on a regular basis.

We need to watch the complaining. I don’t know about you, but if anything pains or annoys me my

natural impulse is to relieve that by telling it. I’ve got to tell somebody; maybe because I want

sympathy or maybe because it’s a relief to express how we feel, but it’s true the saints says that such

complaining is rarely made without sin. We need to be very careful about that. It causes us to gossip,

too. This is why I really wanted to look at Job in more depth. Job teaches us that. That is where I

began to learn the lesson that silence is so valuable to God. I know it seems like a little thing to us but

victory over ourselves is nothing to frown at. It is a huge thing to be humble, to learn to be humble in

these little circumstances. The effort of keeping silent in a case like that brings its own reward. Maybe

it’s a complaining thing or maybe we’re having to endure temptation. I love Tobias 12:13. It says,

“Because you were acceptable to God”, says the angel to Tobias, “it was necessary that temptation

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should try us.” To be tested or tried in the Bible is not like a litmus test. It’s not a pass or fail. To try

or to test in the Bible means to give you practice. It’s an opportunity to practice. That’s all it is. It’s

not a pass or fail. If you fall, don’t get discouraged. Don’t get impatient with yourself. Just get up

and go again, and wait for the next opportunity because it will be right behind that one. We don’t

have to worry that we’re not going to get practice. We get it every day.

James, again, “My brothers and sisters, count it all joy when you fall into trials” because they bring

about that patience that we are looking for. While we’re at it, some of you are mad right now at

someone for something specific. Maybe they hold you in contempt. Maybe they have slandered you.

Maybe you have been falsely accused. Maybe you have been humiliated. Whatever. Whatever causes

other people to look at you with contempt and you feel humiliated by that and you want that revenge,

listen to me: Contempt is better suited to almost anything else to humble us and to bring us into

conformity into God’s will if we’ll take it as we ought to, which is this opportunity to practice. There

is nothing more precious. It comes straight from charity and love. This is the charity and love that Job

and Mary and Jesus and the saints and the martyrs and the guardian angels and the holy souls in

purgatory have. This is the kind of love and patience that we’re talking about, and contempt from

other people is the best teacher.

I’ve shared this quite a bit but when I was coming into the Church I was undergoing a whole lot of what

I would really call persecution. I was this little former Protestant girl and my pastor had hired me as

the religious education director of our church. The Catholics were mad because I wasn’t Catholic for

long and the Protestants were mad because I had left the Protestant church and come into full

communion with the Catholic church. My husband was mad because I had split our family religiously

speaking. Everybody everywhere was in contempt of me. I mean, I had one or two friends who had

come into the church before me who held me up and helped me just get through that. I told the story

a couple of times. It’s actually in my radio show called DARE, the three-part story there, but I talk

about how I had a seminarian stalk me at that time. I remember going to a confirmation mass and he

was there and during the sign of peace at mass he turned his head and he would not even look at me.

Here I am, Miss Impatient, Miss-Gonna-Make-You-Do-It, I stepped in front of him and put my hand out,

and he turned away again. Listen, you talk about humbling? All of that happening together was so

painful. It was so difficult. It was dark and lonely and painful and awful. My son had an accident that

almost killed him at the same time, so I was postpartum with an infant, I had a child that had almost

died and who required months of therapy, I had just started a full-time job with our parish as religious

education director for all the people who hated my guts, I had left a denomination that hated my guts,

my husband and I were in terrible conflict over what I had done, the kids were coming into the church

too….it was the biggest mess. But I remember that time very, very sweetly for a couple of reasons,

and one of them was I had nobody but Jesus and the Eucharist. It was so dark and so desolate, and I

remember thinking, “Lord, I can’t make it through this darkness. I can’t see anything. I don’t feel

anything happy. I’m never going to make it.” He said, “You will. You will because I am with you and I

will never depart from you.” I just remember seeing the things that were being worked out a little bit

at a time. The prayers that I had were being answered; not in the way that I wanted but in ways that

was very painful, but God was answering my prayers and he let me see little pieces of that. It was just

enough on a daily basis to keep me going one more step.

When we talk about having patience, we don’t have to like it. If we have to complain then I would say

complain to him. I hope later on down the road we’ll look at Job to sort of understand what that

complaining does, but I am going to tell you that I have learned not to do that. I have learned not to

complain against God when I am suffering like that because when I see the fruit of it, when I see what

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happens in the end and what it brought about, I am so ashamed that I have complained and accused

him and fought against his love for me and those around me who I have been praying for. Even so,

getting past the complaining is the second step, but we are where we are. There is no need in beating

ourselves up over it or being impatient with ourselves. Just pick up and move forward and do better

the next time. That’s all we can do. If we can at least get our outward behavior under control and

leave the inward part to the Holy Spirit, he will bring it about. He brings it all about by grace, but

there is a sense in which we have self-control and can at least control ourselves in certain situations

without a whole lot of help from the Holy Spirit. Eventually he gives us those that we do need his help

for, and that’s because he’s growing our faith. Think about your poor guardian angel. I mean, who has

more patience than that guardian angel? What about the holy souls in purgatory? Their wills are in

perfect conformity to God’s will and they can’t be anything but patient amid all that stuff that they

are suffering. They don’t rebel against it, but just because they are submissive to it doesn’t remove

the difficulty and sorrow of knowing how comparatively easy it would have been for them just to have

submitted to it at the time while they were here instead of having to endure what they are enduring

now.

By uniting our own actions and our own sufferings to the actions and sufferings of Jesus, we can

produce the fruit of patience. What is the fruit of patience? The Bible says that it is peace, as we saw

in the book of James. I experienced that with my situation with my husband and son. And then St.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:10 that we’re always sorrowing yet always rejoicing, so the second fruit of

patience is joy. Then, one of my passages in all of the scriptures: In Romans 5:4 St. Paul says that we

have joy in our tribulations knowing that tribulation (or trial) produces perseverance and perseverance

character, and character hope. Hope is the third fruit of patience. Dear One, when you pray for

patience you just might as well expect that things are not going to go well, because in order to grow in

patience we have to grow in the amount of time that we can suffer under the difficulties and

irritations of daily life.

That’s patience as the fruit of the spirit. We are going to look next week at kindness. See you then!

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