By Your Patience You will Gain Your Soul

October 1, 2024

Dreamstime

Hi!  How is each and every one?  I guess these days the good Lord has been planting and replanting this virtue into my mind, heart and soul. He must really have been into it.  Now that I am working on this post, I am convinced that it is so. No wonder I have been wanting to do something and couldn’t find the way to do so.  But as always things fall into place, either I let go of what it is I have been wanting to do in those moments, I get into something else waiting to be done, or I accept the situation and look for other better things to do. It is not that easy a situation to find oneself in and yet I am able to pass through it without any doubt through the grace of God. I just came across the phrase “The grace of God will always be available to us:  ‘Non est abbreviate manus Domini’ (Is 59:1), the power of the Lord has not diminished.” Topping it all is being able to recognize each and every good thing happening at the same time around me and thanking Our Lord for each and every one of them.

Would you allow me, please, to share with you last Friday’s (25^th of Ordinary time) Mass reading on Ecclesiastes 3:1-11:  “There is a season for everything, a time for every occupation under heaven:  A time for giving birth, a time for dying; a time for planting, a time for uprooting what has been planted.  A time for killing, a time for healing; a time for knocking down, a time for building.  A time for tears, a time for laughter; a time for mourning, a time for dancing. A time for throwing stones away, a time for gathering them up; a time for embracing, a time to refrain from embracing.  A time for searching, a time for losing; a time for keeping, a time for throwing away.  A time for tearing, a time for sewing; a time for keeping silent, a time for speaking.  A time for loving, a time for hating; a time for war, a time for peace. What does a man gain for the efforts that he makes?  I contemplate the task that God gives mankind to labor at.  All that he does is apt for its time; but though he has permitted man to consider time in its wholeness, man cannot comprehend the work of God from beginning to end.”

Isn’t it wonderful and consoling to be reminded of time, that is, life given by God to each one of us? Are you and I not experiencing each and every event in our daily life that is well articulated in the passage above?  And true indeed, you and I cannot comprehend the work of God from beginning to end.

As we go through today’s post let us pray for each and every one of us going through one or more of the situations above and ask Our Lord to accompany each one as she/he goes through those unpleasant or bitter situations or moments with His abounding grace. Situations or moments like these need prayers especially when one is so deep into her own pride. One just has to get out of herself and talk everything over with God.

Following is the continuation of our divine longing for justice (From Broken Gods, Hope, Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human Heart, Gregory K. Popcak, Ph. D. Ch 6).

The Heavenly Virtue Patience – Antidote to Wrath

Satisfying our divine longing for justice requires us to practice the heavenly virtue of patience.  Many believe that being patient means putting up with offensive people and just “letting things go.”  But there is a big difference between patience and indulgence.

Being patient enables us to make a thoughtful, appropriate, respectful, and proportionate response to an injustice. It enables me to step back from the injury, assess what’s really going on, and ascertain what I might be able to do to actually fix it.  Patience gives me the space to let responsible attempts to address an injustice mature.  It helps me maintain a peaceful spirit while I address the offenses committed against me, not because I don’t care how things turn out, but because I know that by cooperating with God’s grace, I can be confident that my efforts will pay off either in the form of an actual resolution to the problem or at least in some measures that can bring relief while I continue working on the larger issue.  Finally, when I practice patience, I allow my responses to earthly injustices to simultaneously heal, in small ways, the Great Injustice that is my ongoing separation from God. 

Practicing this kind of intentional, mindful patience (as opposed to mindless resignation) propels me to seek shelter under God’s wings (Ps 17:8), to allow my heart to soften in the warmth of his care, to become more pliable in his hands.

Patience isn’t just good for the soul.  It blesses every part of our lives.  Psychologists refer to the virtue of patience as “delayed gratification,” the willingness to forgo smaller, short-term gains so that a larger, long-term gain might be acquired.  For instance, I could spend what’s left of my paycheck after bills on a weekend in Las Vegas, or I could save what’s left for my kid’s college fund, or my dream home, or an even nicer trip.  Decades for research shows that the ability to be patient—that is, to delay gratification—directly correlates with the amount of life and relationship satisfaction a person can expect from his or her life.  In the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment of the early 1970s, four-year-olds were told they could eat a marshmallow now or wait fifteen minutes and have two marshmallows.  Subsequent studies done on the test subjects demonstrated that the children who were able to wait for the second marshmallow were ten years later considered to be more competent by parents and teachers, and twenty years later they scored an average of 210 points higher on the SAT.  Our capacity for patience has tremendous influence on our overall health, wealth, and well-being.

Patience ultimately facilitates our divinization by reminding us of the higher goal that we are pursuing every moment. Patience helps us to attend to both the immediate and the ancient wounds in our hearts and souls; it enables us to take the time we need to cultivate a godly plan of action.

At this point allow me to share with you two parts of the article Time is a Treasure by St. Josemaria, Friends of God, nos. 39 and 54. 

no. 39:  “As I talk to you, and we make conversation together with God, Our Lord, I am simply voicing aloud my personal prayer. I like to remind myself of this very often. You for your part must also make an effort to nourish your own prayer within your souls, even in situations, such as the one we are in today, when we find ourselves having to deal with a topic which, at first sight, does not seem very conducive to a loving dialogue, which is what our conversation with God should aim to be. I say 'at first sight', because, of course, everything that happens to us, everything that goes on around us, can and indeed should form a theme for our meditation.

I want to talk to you about time that passes so swiftly. I am not going to repeat to you the well-known phrase about one year more being one year less… Nor am I going to suggest that you ask around what others think of the passage of time. If you were to do so, you would probably hear something like, 'Oh divine treasure of youth that slips away, never more to return…', though I admit you may come across other views with a deeper and more supernatural content.

Nor is it my purpose to dwell nostalgically on the brevity of human life. For us Christians the fleetingness of our journey through life should instead be a spur to help us make better use of our time. It should never be a motive for fearing Our Lord, and much less for looking upon death as a disastrous and final end. It had been said in countless ways, some more poetical than others that, by the grace and mercy of God, each year that ends is a step that takes us nearer to Heaven, our final home.

When I reflect on this, how well I understand St Paul's exclamation when he writes to the Corinthians, tempus breve est. How short indeed is the time of our passing through this world! For the true Christian these words ring deep down in his heart as a reproach to his lack of generosity, and as a constant invitation to be loyal. Brief indeed is our time for loving, for giving, for making atonement. It would be very wrong, therefore, for us to waste it, or to cast this treasure irresponsibly overboard. We mustn't squander this period of the world's history which God has entrusted to each one of us.

no. 54:  “The fruit of our prayer today should be the conviction that our journey on earth, at all times and whatever the circumstances, is for God; that it is a treasure of glory, a foretaste of heaven, something marvelous, which has been entrusted to us to administer, with a sense of responsibility, being answerable both to men and to God.  But it is not necessary for us to change our situation in life.  Right in the middle of the world we can sanctify our profession or job, our home life, and social relations – in fact all those things that seem to have only a worldly significance. 

When at the age of twenty-six I perceived the full depth of what it meant to serve our Lord in Opus Dei, I asked with all my heart to be granted the maturity of an eighty year old man.  I asked my God, with the childlike simplicity of a beginner, to make me older, so that I would know how to use my time well and learn how to make the best use of every minute, in order to serve him.  Our Lord knows how to grant these riches.  Perhaps the time will come when you and I will be able to say, ‘I have understood more than the elders, because I have fulfilled your commandments.”’ Youth need not imply thoughtlessness; just as having grey hair does not necessarily mean that a person is prudent and wise.

Come with me to Mary, the Mother of Christ.  You, who are our mother and have seen Jesus grow up and make good use of the time he spent among men, teach me how to spend my days serving the Church and all mankind.  My good Mother, teach me, whenever necessary, to hear in the depths of my heart, as a gentle reproach, that my time is not my own, because it belongs to Our Father who is in Heaven”.

With the above excerpts you and I have enough to bring into our conversation with Our Lord in the quiet time we agreed to meet Him.  Let us cherish those times and safeguard them.  We cannot afford to live through every day without talking with God and listening intently to what He tells us in those precious quiet moments with Him.

Oh! Before I say adieu, let us welcome a young friend who happened to pass by and found me working on this post and we got into talking.  I guess she became curious what this no nonsense blog is all about and she somehow showed interest and when I asked her if she wants to be among you in the viber group, she agreed and typed in her number. Let’s hope she gets some of her friends to share as well.  Meantime let’s remember one another in prayer.  It is all right if we talk to Our Lord about one another.  I am sure He will be pleased.

See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us together again.”

Affectionately,                    

Guadalupinky