Notebook
“Patience is a virtue, get it if you can, seldom in a woman, never in a man.” One of my earliest memories is hearing my grandmother recite this proverb. I’m not sure what impatience on my part warranted this correction, and I’m not sure it had much effect either!
What does patience mean, and is it really a virtue? Traditionally it refers to the ability, built up by practice, to endure with unavoidable suffering as you wait for something good. It means refusing to focus on your sufferings, and instead keeping your heart set on the good thing you’re waiting for, whether it’s an apple pie or the end of a prison sentence (or, in a case of truly heroic patience, Mayo winning the Sam Maguire).
Futile
If we fail to cultivate patience we find that we give in quickly to complaining, which is usually entirely futile. Think of a group of people waiting in line in a bakery. Simply standing there is tiresome, it involves a certain suffering. A patient person will deal with the situation by setting her heart on the goodness of the bread, and smiling through the wait. An impatient person will start complaining, not shortening the queue, of course, but taking everyone else with her into a spiral of misery.
Patience isn’t, of course, a matter of being totally passive or apathetic. If there’s something reasonable we can do to end our suffering, then we should do it. We’re not masochists. But when nothing can be done, the virtue of patience is what we need.
At this stage of the coronavirus pandemic, the limits of our patience are being tested. How long more will our churches be closed? How long more will public Masses be suspended? How long more will we have to limit our socialising and our movements? In the last week I’ve noticed many people who had been dealing with this new situation in a sensible and peaceable way suddenly giving in to irritation and venting.
These reactions are entirely understandable, but we should remember that patience is one of the virtues that should characterise a Christian, and mark us out from the impatient world.
History
The history of our spiritual ancestors, the people of Israel, is full of periods when patience was a key virtue. Just think of the Exile, when, for some five decades, the Jews had to live in Babylon, far from their beloved city of Jerusalem and its temple. At the beginning of the Exile, when some self-proclaimed prophets were provoking false hopes of a speedy return, the prophet Jeremiah wrote a letter to the exiles encouraging them instead to wait quietly, to accept the plans of God, and to flourish even in exile.
In the New Testament too the virtue of patience is constantly underlined. The greatest example is of course Christ’s patient endurance of the Cross for the sake of our salvation.
As his followers, the early Christians knew they too were called to patience. St Paul, for example, reminds the Corinthians that true love is patient, he tells the Thessalonians to be “patient with everyone”, and to the persecuted Roman Christians he advises “patience in tribulation”.
The Christians in Colossae should wear the virtue of patience like “clothing”, said Paul. He reminded the Galatians that patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, and he called the Church in Ephesus to “bear with one another” patiently.
We Christians are suffering, along with everyone else, and our suffering is multiplied by our exile from the sacraments and common worship. But we shouldn’t waste our time with futile complaints, in conversation or on social media.
This time of exile is an opportunity for us to wait quietly and to let the Spirit adorn our souls with the beautiful virtue of patience as we fix our hearts on the good things our good God has in store for us.
Keep calm and keep smiling!
One way to work on our virtue is to meditate on role models. During these days, many people have been thinking back to the Second World War, for example. Those years saw millions of people quietly and calmly enduring the absence of their loved ones, as well as dietary limitations and a loss of freedom to travel.
For many, the song that has helped connect them with that brave generation is Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again: “We’ll meet again/don’t know where/don’t know when […]/Keep smiling through/Just like you always do/’till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away”.
It’s a beautiful monument to the patience of the World War II generation, whose virtue is worth emulating in our time. Keep smiling through…
