Patience. “Should we act now? Should we wait? It’s a big question in human life, and a frequent one for us provincials who have to make decisions because we have to govern. Should we act? Should we do it now? Is now the right time? Sometimes I do not know how to make a decision because I do not know what to do, or I am embarrassed, or I am afraid of making a mistake, which paralyzes me.“
In God’s Time: Patience as Discernment
“Let them both grow together until the harvest.”
(Matthew 13:30)
Under the sign of patience. If we are to remember Saint Anne and Saint Joachim, we must – if we are to believe the proto-gospel of James – remember two great figures of patience. Patient – perhaps even resigned – weary of waiting for the child who does not come, yet who will arrive in the person of the Virgin Mary. We are all familiar with the men and women in the Bible who wait faithfully for God’s gift to be revealed to them, before the promise is finally fulfilled. Waiting is rewarded.
In the parable of the good seed and the weeds, patience is also called for. It is at the heart of the parable.
I confess that, being a city-dweller, I am not sure I have a good grasp of the reasons for waiting, and I would be hard pressed – come harvest day – to find a way of separating the wheat from the chaff. So we would just have to be patient and resign ourselves, for the time being, to watching the horrible, unbearable spectacle of a disorderly field in the midst of chaos. For the time being, we will not act. We will just wait.
Should we act now? Should we wait? It’s a big question in human life, and a frequent one for us provincials who have to make decisions because we have to govern. Should we act? Should we do it now? Is now the right time? Sometimes I do not know how to make a decision because I do not know what to do, or I am embarrassed, or I am afraid of making a mistake, which paralyzes me. I am afraid of regretting an unwise, ill-informed decision. And then, do I have all the parameters in hand? Have I understood what is at stake, deciphered the culture (when it is not my own), grasped what I was not told, or what I was told but did not really hear? I would rather not, which would not be fair. Because you have to decide – and this can be torturous. And even, sometimes, to decide quickly. There are situations where you can not – and should not – wait.
But on certain occasions, in all conscience, it seems that the decision would be premature, unjust, even if it could be rooted in law. It might be a brother who refuses (apparently without just cause) an assignment; it might be the observation of the estrangement of another, which everything suggests is definitive. What should I do now? It is not always easy to say.
If there is a gap for patience, between laxity and rigor, it is because it can be good to give the field time to grow, to see more clearly what it looks like. Could this not be the face of mercy, allowing the brother to grow, and giving him the chance to sort things out for himself, to make the right judgement he is entitled to on what is good grain and what are weeds in his life?
Our apostolic mission, which occupies us during this general chapter, does not allow us to escape the question of patience: if there are dreaded weeds, it is indeed that of the idolatry of quick results, of which we might boast. Of course, it would be good if we had signs of our preaching, and we may well do so, even brilliantly. But sometimes signs are slow in coming. Then we will have to stick to the slowness of the field as it grows, especially in slightly hidden, remote places, and resolve [ourselves] to believe in the discreet fruitfulness of the Gospel humbly proclaimed.
Patience is a virtue, and our Church has suffered from not always exercising it enough. Today, we are still paying the price for impatient joys, for a pastoral care of results, for overly rapid growth, without prudence, sometimes without justification. Then history reveals, in the clatter of damaged existences, that there were weeds there too.
In Mosul, Iraq, our convent (just restored after the wounds of the tragedy of Daech) bears the beautiful name of Our Lady of the Hour. This Hour has given its name to this whole area of the old city: the Hour (Al Saar). In fact, the brothers’ clock tells the time for the whole city, Christians and Muslims alike. I love this image of the hour – of time ticking away for everyone. In this field of human life, it is in fact God Himself who marks time, and it is in His own time that judgment is made.
If we had a prayer to offer, it would be to enter God’s time. Delivered from our anxieties and procrastinations. In patience and faith in the master of the field.
He alone knows the day and the hour.
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