Patience Towards Others

(Cabbage Field on the Farm at St James' Hospital by Edward King - found here)

“Let us apply this [see previous post] then to a desire that we have that others around us would behave better: that this desire would be peaceful and without distress. Let us know how to remain calm even when others around us act in a manner that seems to us erroneous and unjust. We should clearly do what depends on us to help them, even to see that they are reproved or corrected, in line with the potential responsibilities that we have to assume with regard to them, but everything should be done in gentleness and peace. When we are powerless, let us be quiet and let God act.

How many people lose their peace because they want, at any price, to change those around them! How many married people become agitated and irritated because they would like their spouses not to have this or that fault! The Lord asks us, on the contrary, to bear with patience the faults of others.

We must reason as follows: if the Lord has still not transformed this person, has not relieved him of such and such an imperfection, it is because He puts up with him as he is! He waits, with patience, the opportune moment. Then I must do likewise. I must pray and be patient. Why be more demanding and impatient than God? I think sometimes that my haste is motivated by love. But, God loves infinitely more than I do; however He is less hurried! Therefore be patient, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. Think of the farmer: how he waits for the precious yield of the earth, patiently waiting until it receives the early and late rains! (James 5:7).

This patience is all the more important in that it brings about in us a purification that is absolutely indispensable. We believe that we wish the good of others, or our own good, but this wish is frequently mixed with a great deal of hidden search for oneself, our own will, our attachment to personal beliefs, narrow and limited, to which we cling so much and that we wish to impose on others and sometimes even on God. We must at all costs be free of this narrowness of heart and judgment, in order that it is the good, not such as we imagine it or conceive it, that is realized, but that which corresponds to the designs of God, so much more vast and appealing.”

~Jacques Philippe