The Patience to Act
The 80s were… interesting.
Have patience, have patience
Don't be in such a hurry
When you get impatient, you only start to worry
Remember, remember that God is patient, too
And think of all the times when others have to wait for you
If you grew up in the 1980s, in a certain corner of the evangelical church, The Music Machine provided the soundtrack for your childhood (and if that’s you, then no doubt, you now have the “Patience” song about Herb the Snail stuck in your head - sorry). As the Octet Collaborative continues its year-long look at the virtues, we turn this month to the rather under-appreciated virtue of patience, in order to see how crucial it is to responsible action.
Patience does not come naturally in our instant society. Every song, TV show, and movie is available instantly and on demand (my kids are tired of me reminding them that “when I was their age,” my favorite shows only came on once a week, and if you missed it, you just had to hope it would come back in re-runs one day!) (they also continue to be unclear on the concept of a “re-run”). Most of our communication is instant, over email or text, raising the possibility and even the expectation that the response should come instantly as well, any time of day, any day of the week. The inconvenience of waiting for a coffee order is now combined with the indignity of watching as the more tech-savvy customers who ordered ahead on the app walk in, immediately pick up their order, and walk out.
Patience, like humility, isn’t always recognized as a virtue at all. We move with urgency and expect others to do the same, all the more with respect to matters of importance, whether in work or relationships, and especially in matters of justice. “Justice deferred is justice denied,” after all - why would we want anyone to be patient in the face of wrongs to be righted, or problems to be solved?
In response to this, it’s important to distinguish patience from passivity. Patience is not a reticence to act or an inert disposition. Patience, rather, is the capacity to bear up under the sorrow of those wrongs that we and others suffer, particularly those unjustly inflicted on us by other people, even when their resolution is out of reach or a long time coming. It is necessary because it preserves our capacity to act wisely and deliberately for the good where we can, while enduring the weight of suffering when we can’t. “Patience,” writes Josef Pieper, “does not imply the exclusion of energetic forceful activity, but simply, explicitly and solely the exclusion of sadness and confusion of hearts. Patience keeps [us] from the danger that [our] spirit may be broken by grief and lose its greatness.” (The Four Cardinal Virtues, p. 129)
Thomas Aquinas, as we’ve noted before this year, connects all of the virtues to one of the four cardinal virtues: wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. Patience, he argues, is a part of courage, which is that virtue that governs our appetitive response to that which is unpleasant or fearful, impelling us forward toward arduous goods, from which we would otherwise shrink back. More specifically, Aquinas points out that there are times when the sheer sorrow of living in a world of suffering threatens to weigh us down and prevent us from being able to act for our own good or for the good of others. “Hence the necessity,” he writes, “for a virtue to safeguard the good of reason against sorrow, lest reason give way to sorrow: and this patience does. Wherefore Augustine says (De Patientia ii): ‘A man's patience it is whereby he bears evil with an equal mind,’ i.e. without being disturbed by sorrow, ‘lest he abandon with an unequal mind the goods whereby he may advance to better things.’" (ST II.II.136.1.resp.)
For Thomas, the reason that patience does not translate to passivity in the face of evil is that all of the virtues are meant to work together. Patience is meant to work in concert with wisdom, with justice, and with other parts of courage that call us to action. He writes that “patience is chiefly about sorrow, for a man is said to be patient, not because he does not fly, but because he behaves in a praiseworthy manner by suffering [patiendo] things which hurt him here and now, in such a way as not to be inordinately saddened by them.… it belongs to patience that a man forsake not the good of virtue on account of such like sorrows, however great they be.” (ST II.II.136.4.ad obj. 2)
Patience, like any virtue, is not a mere personality trait. There are those with a more patient disposition than others, but a virtue is something that can be trained and developed habitually through repeated action (Aquinas recognizes that it requires grace as well, as “the love of God” - which is itself patient according to 1 Corinthians 13:4 - “is poured into our hearts,” Romans 5:5). How does this happen?
In the Christian tradition, the primary way that we develop the patience to bear up under life’s sorrows in a way that preserves our freedom for responsible action is to remember, in the face of life’s inconstant and changing trials, of what we know about the unchanging character of God. The repeated refrain of scripture that engenders patience is simply “Wait on the Lord.” “For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him,” writes the Psalmist in Psalm 62:5. Or again, in Psalm 27:14, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” - an injunction that makes explicit the connection between patience and courage. The famous words of the prophet Isaiah draw the connection between patience and the capacity for action: “But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31) And patience as a response to sorrow in particular is the heartfelt and passionate theme of Psalm 130:
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy! …
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning. - Psalm 130:1-2, 5-6
The apparent tension here - that responsible action requires patient endurance of sorrow and suffering - is in fact of central importance to the Christian life. We see His strength perfected in our weakness. We wait on him in order to act. He calls us to rest in Him on the first day of the week, in order to be renewed by his grace through word and sacrament and only then sent out into the world as agents of his love. In Isaiah 30:15, he has told us that our very salvation lies in “rest and repentance,” our strength in “quietness and trust.”
And what about when we find this too hard, as we often do? We so often find it impossible to wait on God - but even here, we are met by his grace, as his perfect patience responds to our impatience. That same passage referenced above, in Isaiah 30, speaks of those who refuse to rest and repent, to wait on the Lord with quietness and trust:
For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel,
“In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”
But you were unwilling, and you said,
“No! We will flee upon horses”;
therefore you shall flee away;
and, “We will ride upon swift steeds”;
therefore your pursuers shall be swift. - Isaiah 30:15-16
And how does God respond - with judgment and wrath for those who had their chance, and blew it? To the contrary, it says: “Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.” (Isaiah 30:18). He is a God who waits for us, and He is a God who waits with us.
The secret to patience, then? “Remember, remember, that God is patient too…” - and then wait on the Lord. Be reminded by the scriptures, be reminded by worship, be reminded in the community of faith, of who God is and how faithful He has been. As Psalm 78 tells us, remember all that He has done for you in Christ, setting your hope on him alone, and you will develop the patience to live a life of faithfulness.
