Patience
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23 July 1988
Salzburg, Austria

My dear Sisters,

The stories or parables which Our Lord told to His audiences can, for the most part, be understood by a child, and yet the greatest Christian intellects could reflect on these stories and draw from them much nourishment for their minds and for their spiritual lives. The parable in today's Gospel is simplicity itself, but there is a mine of spiritual riches in it. One could say that, like a mine, there are different strata in it. You could say that it centers on the theme of patience.

The first stratum is the patience of God. We often hear people ask: "Why does God allow this or that to happen?" In asking the question there is sometimes a note of reproach, almost blaming God for the evil in the world. Sometimes we put too many questions to God, when we could be devoting more time to reflecting upon and admiring His great patience. Each moment of the day there are people gravely insulting God, provoking Him, shaking their fists at him, and all the time our God remains silent. He does not retaliate by destroying this tiny, almost insignificant planet of the universe, which we call earth. Were the earth to disappear from the universe, it would hardly be missed. God does not destroy the planet, because He has told us that He "so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." (Jn 3:16). "Love," says St. Paul, "is patient." (1 Cor 13:4). Our silent, loving God is a patient God Who waits. Our Lord makes that clear in today's parable.

The second stratum in today's Gospel is patience with others. Most of us are experts at seeing the weeds that grow in our neighbor's field. We have a sharp eye for the defects in our neighbor's character. We have an instinctive desire to pluck the weeds out of our neighbor's character. Sometimes our motives for doing so are not pure. We wish to correct our neighbor because his way of acting merely irritates us. Our Lord's advice is that we should be patient. Above all, we should not correct our neighbor when we are angry or impatient. You will recall what St. Vincent said. In his lifetime he had on three occasions corrected people in anger, and his corrections, he tells us, achieved nothing.

The third stratum in today's Gospel is patience with ourselves. Each of us is conscious that there are wheat and weeds in our characters. There is the wheat of our virtues and there are the weeds of our defects. As long as we live in our present human condition, there will be weeds in the field of our souls. The final eradication of all the weeds will come only after our deaths. It is true that we must continually keep cutting back the weeds, even if we cannot pull them up by the roots. We must cut back the weeds, and that is where mortification must come in. We mortify ourselves in order that the wheat of God's love, which is in our hearts, may be able to grow stronger day by day.

So, my dear Sisters, Our Lord's message for us today is that we be patient with Him, patient with others, and patient with ourselves. Our Lord does not wish that we be discouraged by His slowness in acting nor by our neighbor's defects, nor by our own weakness. Let me end by quoting a little advice which St. Vincent gave to a Superior who was suffering because of differences that had arisen among the different characters of his community: "The remedy for all that is patience, support and prayer to God....I hope you will find by all these means peace and joy for yourself and for your community. (I hope) that these means will be a help to all in general and to each in particular in order to advance in virtue. But remember that patience is as necessary for us to support each other as charity is to support the neighbor. May it please God to give us both one and the other. I am in His love, Your humble servant, Vincent de Paul, unworthy priest of the Mission." (Coste VII, Fr. ed., pp. 275-276).

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