Patience

The following is a portion of a retreat that Evelyn Underhill gave in 1927 called "Inner Grace and Outward Sign." It's included in the book The Ways of the Spirit. The fruit of patience is the Patient One living His life out through us.

"We come to the third of the three great qualities which we have set ourselves to learn from Christ. Patience is the fundamental disposition of the brave and generous soul, yet it is often more difficult for the soul to put in place and keep that quality than to deal with the more active expressions of its love.

"Patience is like the steady, even tension of the warp on which the fabric of the spiritual life is woven, the long continuous threads which don't appear on the surface but give it strength and unity and carry equally the light and the dark bits of the pattern, the vivid, significant patches and the long spaces that seem to have no meaning at all until we see the whole design. Without the warp of patience, the woof with its joys and mortifications would have no coherence at all. And when the cloth was finished, it would be shoddy. Very little wear and tear would pull it to bits.

"Patience is that aspect of our love that bears evenly all that is unseen. Until it is established, we don't really love. When it is established we not only bear things but accept them with unruffled interior tranquility, for patience 'bears the burden without the burden,' says a Kempis, 'and makes every bitter thing sweet and savory.'

"When we realize that all forms of impatience--anger, resentment, resistance to circumstances, fuss--are ultimately born of self-love and that an impatient person can't put God first, then we see that patience really is the primary virtue.

"Its simile is acceptance, and that means the death of self and therefore the death of strain. Strain, which makes half the misery of life, need never happen. Strain is always our own fault. It is always a failure to accept, a stiffening of ourselves against events instead of a supple acceptance of them.

"Consider again the warp on the loom. If its tension is right, it accepts without strain all the threads that make the pattern, and an even fabric results. If it is tight and resistant, the shuttles can't pass easily and the weaving becomes difficult and full of strain.

"'Patience,' says Ruysbroeck, 'is the peaceful, indifferent endurance, for the sake of God, of all that can happen.' Nothing does so much to deepen and steady the soul's life. Many characteristics have been put forward as the 'secret of sanctity,' but of course there is no one sort of sanctity, as there is no one type of saint. The secret of sanctity is just perfect, loving, humble correspondence with God wherever you are in whatever He asks you to do.

"On the whole, I think the characteristic which impresses me most in the saints I have had the privilege to meet, has been the quiet, genial, unassuming spirit of acceptance in the ups and downs and the suffering of life. In them, there is a complete absence of agitation about our souls or anything else. Like St. Paul, often in conflict within the Christian circle--ill, weary, and over-driven with impossible demands made on them--they are called to bitter and secret conflicts with evil. But underneath, patience is ever there. They are free, fellow workers of One who took the role of Suffering Servant, One who was dumb before His persecutors and acquiescent in spite of mocking and insults, One who was patient under the gradual unfolding of the Father's mysterious will.

"When we approach the scene of Calvary, we see how the reasoning, knowing, active side of human nature drops away and there remains an infinite patience and surrender, even in the most terrible confusion and bewilderment, in physical exhaustion, mental desolation, failure, and death. Such patience lies very near the heart of sacrifice.

"The lessons of patience are taught not only by the Passion, but by the whole life of Christ. There are so many that they will be different for each soul. As we watch each scene pass before us, we can only respond with the words of St. Ignatius to those who contemplate them: 'Look! Gaze! Admire!' So look, you who are His assistants, at the perpetual patience required of One whose whole ministry was among those incapable of comprehending His secret, people who seldom rose above the desire to get healing and comfort for themselves--the crowds sick for sensation, perpetually breaking in on His peace--the foolish questions and cowardice of the disciples. Look at that and then look at our self-important dislike of interruption and our silly or unnecessary demands on our valuable time. Look at His silent endurance of calumny, and feel perhaps just a bit uncomfortable at the memory of our own flow of words in self-explanation and excuse.

"Look! Compare what you would risk by patient silence and what Christ endured in silence. Remember how much ignoble fear and lack of generosity contribute to our impatient response to life. How often some of us are afraid that people may think we did this or that or planned this or the other. How we dread and resent derision and wither up under critical or sarcastic words! All that looks very cheap in the light of the self-oblivious patience of Christ, that patience, infinitely noble and worthy, which quietly endured the lot of the worthless.

"Well, we begin to be ready to accept this idea of patience as the earnest and token of self-oblivion, as the strengthening thread that runs through the supernatural life. And if this is so, we are asking for it in three ways and give it in three ways: in patience toward God, patience toward others, and patience toward ourselves.

"Patience toward God is the quiet acceptance of life bit by bit from His hand. It is just letting His molding action work on the soul, whether we see the point of what happens or not. It means patience when He leaves us in the darkness. It is never trying to hurry His pace, never being restive under His hand. You remember that we said that when Christ comes into the soul, He comes as a workman and brings His tools with Him. He does chip and shape. We impede His action least if we stay quiet, bearing both the sharp blows and persistent sandpaper by which so much of His work on the soul is done, and never seek to anticipate results. When we think how patient God is toward us, it doesn't seem much to ask that we, His tiny creatures, should be patient toward Him and His methods.

"We perceive that we will not be perfect servants without patience. But how are we going to increase it in ourselves? What is the raw material? On what is it nourished? Just on the ups and downs of life, on the imperfections of ourselves and others. How do we take these? Look 'round. Do we never appeal for sympathy? Do we never complain to God? Are we hiding pain? Do we simply and generously forget what goes wrong? If we can learn the grateful joy with which the saints took all their trials, we will recognize in them the privilege of suffering with Christ and complete surrender to God.

"It has been said that there are three great marks of the soul's love for God. I will list them here. They all require patience.

"1. Our entire confidence depends on God. We do not rely on our own endeavors for the spirit to pray, but cast all our care on Him. This is the life of faith.

"2. To have hearts not only obedient to His will, but to delight in it as our necessary rule.

"3. To practice a joyous resignation to His will in every suffering that comes to us. These testify to our love because they utterly exclude self-interest, whereas the feeling of fervor may be disguised self-indulgence.

"Patience toward others is bearing even all that is uneven in character, prejudice, and habits. It is 'letting the stirrer stir,' as a Kempis puts it. It is meeting with equal countenance the nasty and sunny sides of the human person, and the stupid and bitter sides too. It is that same attitude toward people who spoil our work and let us down in the things we most prize. It is equanimity toward the people who offend our taste and rouse our latent fastidiousness, that most unchristian quality which is born of conceit and self and is the death of generous love. It is the same response toward the people who delay and worry us, the people who always ask for a cup of cold water at the wrong time, the stupid, the quarrulous, the obstinate, and the prejudiced. Each of us can fill up more blanks for ourselves!

"Perhaps what helps us most here is the remembrance that God comes to us and tests us in and through all these people whom He puts in our way. He dwells within their souls too, and we are being impatient with His dwelling place when we get exasperated with them. All are appointed means whereby we improve our love and service and purify our souls of self-will.

"The third type of patience is patience with ourselves. That is perhaps the most important and the least understood. We all realize that we must try to be patient under the action of God's will, in suffering and in bereavement, in trial and in darkness. We know we need to be patient in daily encounters, and we are quite aware that our duty, even if we can't manage it, is to preserve evenness of mind with the unreasonable and the exasperating.

"But what about patience with ourselves and our endless tumbles and weaknesses and fallings short--all those things which disgust and humiliate us and for that reason, if we take them patiently, can so effectively purify us from the last crumbs of self-esteem? Considering what we are, so disappointing and feeble, unless we are patient with ourselves, how can we hope to preserve our inward calm? And if we lose that, we lose the presence of that Holy Spirit who is tranquility and peace. With this greater loss, we lose all our chances of usefulness to God.

"When Peter's wife's mother lay sick with a fever, Christ came and laid His hands on her and the fever left her. Then she rose and ministered to them. We can't do God's work until the fever of impatience has left us. When we have a temper, we fuss; we do not serve. And the germ produced by that fever is disguised self-love. Impatience with ourselves means that that special streptococcie is getting active. However, there is an antitoxin. It is called humiliation. Full humiliation is inseparable from patience. If we are really humble, it doesn't occur to us to mind what happens; we have lost the silly illusions about our own importance and rights.

"Let us not go away with the idea that exasperated impatience with our faults and hasty and violent efforts to cure them are penitence. They are nothing of the kind. Real penitence rises from each fall calmly and with courage and goes on again. Because it didn't expect much of itself, it bears evenly its own uneven performance and is content to persevere and leave the outcome to God.

"I often think that the spiritual life is very much like gardening, and most of the worst mistakes we make in it, after we have seriously given ourselves to it, are just those mistakes an inexperienced gardener makes. The idea that a good vigorous campaign with a pitch fork is the best way of extirpating tiresome weeds form an herbacious border is the one we most have to unlearn. We plunge in, toss the ground violently in every direction, pluck out the weeds, make a big pile, and retire in a state of moist satisfaction saying we've done a very good morning's work.

"But have we? We've disturbed the roots of the best perennials. We've knocked off some shoots. We've grubbed up loads of little modest seedlings springing up in odd corners. And in our hurry, we have broken weeds and left the bottom half of their stems in the ground to start a vigorous life again.

"An expert doesn't do it like that. That kind of a gardener drops to the knees with a hand fork and works, bit by bit, being very careful not to disturb the growth of the soul in which God has sown His seeds, where the roots of good and bad quality are planted together. That patient, quiet work is the foundation of a good garden: gently keeping the ground in order, picking off slugs and snails, and tending the plants that will grow. Good gardening is not feverishly sticking in geraniums to get a transient show of bloom.

"After all, it is God, not you, who settles what sort of garden it is to be. Your job is strictly confined to making it as good as it can be of its sort. You may want the predominant character to be contemplative and devotional. You would like your soul to grow fragile and beautiful flowers. But perhaps He doesn't want a contemplative just there. It may suit Him better to plant you in potatoes. That is less interesting of course, but just as essential to His plan.

"Patience involves a cheerful acceptance of that and settles down to see that the potatoes are as good as you can get them to be. That, not the self-chosen growing of prize chrysanthemums, is the spirit of a good and faithful servant who will be able at the end to repeat the words of the Master: 'I have finished the work You gave me to do, not the work I decided to do for You. I do not have the startling achievement my admiring followers expected. But I have worked hard in Your secret purposes which I have taken bit by bit from your hand. The work has been done in the wet and the cold and the fog, in weakness and exhaustion, steadily, patiently, and solely for you. And it has had a mysterious efficacy quite out of proportion to its apparent success.'

"The Cross, the death of self, enters deeply into such a career. I often think it will not be the successful and impressive religious person, but the quiet, insignificant workers and sufferers, the obscure, the drudges, and the failures who will be able to say at the end with Christ, 'It is finished! It is complete!'

"It is those who, by simple faith and patient correspondence with God's requirements given bit by bit, whose quiet homely heroism is so easily ignored and yet so difficult, those who will be able to say: 'I, in my tiny way, have glorified You on earth. I have finished the work You gave me to do.'"