52 — PATIENCE

Presence of God. — O Jesus, divine and most meek Patient, teach me the secret of true patience.

Meditation

1 — Patience is the virtue that, for love of God, makes us accept with generosity and with peace all that displeases nature, without letting ourselves be overcome by the sadness that easily invades us when we find ourselves faced with unpleasing things.

Patience is a particular aspect of the virtue of fortitude which impedes us from deviating from the right path through fear of the difficulties that one encounters. There is no life without difficulties, indeed, for those who wish to undertake great things, these are habitually greater and more frequent. Great works, great virtues, heroic virtues always blossom in the midst of difficulties. Faced with them fortitude has a twofold act: to attack and to bear. Many difficulties must be surmounted and conquered with an act of courage; others instead it is impossible to eliminate and then one must learn to bear them, and this is precisely the task of patience. Arduous task, because it is easier to face directly an obstacle, than to bear contrarieties and sufferings inevitably connected with life and which, with the passing of time, attempt to weaken our courage and to make us fall into sadness.

Only by fixing our gaze on Jesus, the divine Patient, does one learn to exercise patience. When we see him, come into the world to save us, live from the first instants of his terrestrial existence in the midst of discomforts, privations, poverty, and then, to misunderstandings, persecutions, made a target to the hatred of his very fellow citizens, calumniated, sought unto death, betrayed by a friend, tried and condemned as a malefactor, our soul is shaken and understands that we cannot be his disciples if not by treading his same path. If Jesus, most innocent, has so much borne for love of us, we sinners and therefore meriting suffering, shall we not bear something for love of him? For as much as there may be in our life to suffer, it will always be very little, indeed a nothing before the infinite sufferings of Jesus, because Jesus in his Passion has not embraced the pain of a single life or of many human lives, but the pain of all humanity.

2 — Whoever wishes to become patient must above all, faced with the motives of suffering, have a profound gaze of faith, which makes him understand how all that happens in life is always permitted by God and solely for his good. Very often, it is true, suffering, difficulties present themselves to us through second causes; but, what does it matter when we know that all comes to us from our good Heavenly Father, who makes use of these painful circumstances precisely to make us become more virtuous? A soul that wishes to live solely of God does not stop to consider the human causes of its sufferings, but, faced with them repeats with simplicity: Dominus est! it is the Lord! and accepts all from his hands.

This however does not impede that one feels the weight of suffering and that one feels it profoundly — Jesus also felt it in his agony in the garden — but it helps us not to trouble ourselves, not to lose peace and serenity, not to lose the dominion of ourselves and therefore patience.

One begins to exercise patience by seeking to tolerate the daily discomforts and sufferings without murmuring, but with resignation, knowing that divine Providence permits no trial that is not for us a source of good. At the beginnings, and also for a long time, the soul will feel much repugnance for suffering, nevertheless, if it strives to embrace it well — with constancy, with peace, with submission to the divine will — a little at a time, precisely through this so painful exercise, it will begin to experience the great spiritual profit that derives from it, it will feel itself in fact more detached from creatures and from self and nearer to God. Although then it will arrive at esteeming suffering and then, experiencing always more its spiritual fecundity, it will end by loving it.

But one must not deceive oneself: love of suffering is the vertex of patience, it is the fruit of perfect patience; to arrive at these heights one must begin from a much more humble exercise: to accept in peace, without complaining, all that makes one suffer.

Colloquy

O Jesus, for love of you and with your help, I wish to suffer in peace all the contrarieties of life. “Your thoughts are not our thoughts, your ways are not our ways. You present to us sometimes a chalice so bitter that scarcely can our nature bear it. But I do not wish to withdraw my lips from the chalice prepared for me by your hand. You teach me the secret of suffering in peace. Who says peace does not say joy, or at least felt joy; to suffer in peace suffices to will all that You will.

“To be your spouse I must resemble you; and You are all bloody and crowned with thorns. You wish to render me similar to you; and why then should I fear not to know how to carry the cross without falling? You, on the way of Calvary, fell three times; and I, poor creature, shall I not wish to be similar to you? Shall I not wish to fall a hundred times to prove to you my love, rising then with more strength than before from the fall?

“How much it consoles me to think that also You, the strong God, have known our weaknesses, have trembled at the sight of the bitter chalice that other times you had so ardently desired.

“O Jesus, how it costs sometimes to give you what you ask! But what happiness that it costs! Far from complaining to you of the crosses that you give me, I cannot understand the infinite love that has moved you to treat me thus. O Lord, I do not wish to let escape the trials that You send me; they are mines of gold to exploit. I, grain of sand, wish to put myself to work without joy, without courage, without strength, and these very impotences will facilitate the enterprise for me; I wish to work for love.

“Notwithstanding the trials that take from me all consolation, I can repeat: Lord, with all that You do you fill me with joy, because there can be no greater joy than that which gives us to suffer for love of you? The more pain is intense, the less it appears to the eyes of creatures, and the more it makes you smile, O my God; but if, by an impossible case, You too should ignore it, I would nevertheless rejoice to suffer, hoping to be able to impede or repair, with my tears, even a single sin” (T.B.G. Lt. 63, 57, 184, 59; St. 9).