The Hidden Power of Patience
According to Saint Paul, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22) And there is this from St. Augustine, “Patience is the companion of wisdom.”
Patience might be defined as the encountering of the small before the large. When I was an English professor I assigned term papers to my students. As the required minimum length of the paper was announced the usual groans could be heard, even with short projects of five pages. I learned to help assuage fears, stressing the need for the student to be patient by encountering the small before the large. That is, do not think of the paper as five pages long, but as an assembly of paragraphs that need be written only one at a time. If the work is diligently approached, the project finishes itself as the single paragraphs almost magically pile up without the oppressive dread of five whole pages weighing over one’s head. The surefire way to write a poor paper is to lack patience and submit to the threat of the large before the small. I know many students who waited until the night before the paper was due to write it. The students’ boredom with having to write such papers was matched and often surpassed only by the boredom of my having to read them. In that, I confess, I did sometimes lose patience.
The lack of patience is often grounded in our growing up with every desire immediately satisfied, whether deserved or not. There is little patience among children. The demand for immediate gratification is often so loud and violent that parents yield immediately to the buying of candy or toys. What they often do not seem to realize is that they are as impatient as their children, and that when they spoil their children they are cultivating impatience both in themselves and in their children. Long-range consequences can be devastating, because in the world outside the family such impatience is not tolerated and sometimes severely punished. The impatient child later grown into an adult finds it difficult to acquire friends, because his impatient and often rudely stated demands land him at the bottom of his social circle, if not expelled from it entirely.
Psalm 37 tells us to wait patiently upon the Lord. This is especially needed when we see monstrous evil triumphing in the world. It is easy to despair of dark powers gathering to kill and destroy. The power of prayer patiently exercised will always confound and end the triumph of evil. This has been observed with every catastrophe in history, from the end of Roman persecution of early Christians to the end of Nazi Germany’s attempt to rid the world of Jews and Christians.
There is a small handbook titled Patience and Humility by the 19th Century Benedictine monk William Ullathorne. The aim of the book is to show how much power there is in patience, when some people think patience is just a sign of weakness or passivity. On the contrary, as it says in the Book of Proverbs, “through patience a ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can break a bone.” (Proverbs 25:14)
Ullathorne stresses the intimate connection between humility and patience. It is pride that makes us impatient (angry) with others and with ourselves; so it is humility that will help us to rest ourselves in God’s all-powerful hands. God, in the person of Jesus Christ, helps us to realize the power of patience and humility bound together. The Son of God humbled Himself by putting on our human nature, then patiently lived among us, patiently taught us what we needed to know, patiently endured insults hurled at Him, patiently accepted His trial and crucifixion, and to this day patiently plants, nurtures, and harvests saints to be with Him forever.
We need to know when we have acquired the virtue of patience, Ullathorne notes.
There are few greater proofs of a well-disciplined interior than to be able to break off at any time with cheerfulness from one duty and turn with equal cheerfulness to another, however unexpected the interruption may be. It is an effect of that detachment of will that comes of patient charity…. Self love and impatience are cowardly vices that shrink with insane fear from the health-giving labors of humility and patience.
Or as Archbishop Fulton Sheen more simply put it: “Patience is power.”·
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