While we wait, a word on patience, time

Pedir, confiar y esperar” (Ask, trust and wait). Father Ignacio Luna, one of our retired priests who recently published a collection of poetry, opens his poem “3 Virtudes,” with these key words. The last word, esperar, makes me stumble.

Our addiction to immediacy pushes us towards impatience. We have an aversion to waiting. Hence, the growing tide of fast foods, overnight deliveries and on-demand videos. We have fed a microwave culture, and allowed it to ensnare us.

Daily we are caught in moments of waiting, waiting for something to occur or waiting at times for God to respond to our prayers. In a world that continually pushes for speed and efficiency, patience seems to get lost in the rush.

Waiting, however, helps us cultivate patience. We can choose to get agitated when confronted with a delay, or we can opt instead to reframe the moment. Consider the purpose for the extra time.

For example, no one likes to wait in line, but we wait when we deem something worthy enough of our time.  In April, on our last day in Rome after attending a seminar for church communication offices, we wanted to visit the Vatican and pray inside St. Peter’s Basilica. The line seemed endless. It curved like a river with thousands of people. It took an hour and a half before we cleared security to walk inside the basilica. It was certainly worth the wait to enter the largest Catholic Church in the world.

After our visit, I realized that the waiting provided us with time to talk to people, to share stories. It allowed time for the encounter with one another, with people we might have seen in passing but never stopped to get to know like the newlyweds from Ohio  on their honeymoon and the family from Poland. A young man, Bartłomiej, was holding a spot for his elderly parents who were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary. His mother was confirmed by Father Karol Wojtyła in Poland, St. John Paul II when he was a priest.

During Lent, we were waiting for Easter, anticipating the Resurrection. Lent gave us time to prepare ourselves through prayer, almsgiving and fasting for the special feast day.

Patience is not an excuse to sit idle. During the wait-time, there is likely something we can begin doing. Also, special graces may be occurring of which we may not be fully aware. Just as we can’t see all the work roots undertake beneath the soil, a transformation may be occurring, or something may be taking shape beyond our knowing, beyond what we can see.

In May, the month of Mary, we can take some lessons from our Blessed Mother. Saint Alphonsus Liguori, in his book The Glories of Mary reminds us, “God gave us the Blessed Virgin Mary as a model of all virtues, but more especially as an example of patience.”

As a mother, I also have a growing appreciation for St. Monica, who prayed for 17 years for the conversion of her son St. Augustine of Hippo. St. Monica never gave up on her loved ones, as her prayers also led to the conversion of her husband and her mother-in-law.

In reference to the word esperar, Father Luna writes in his poem, “…espera sin desesperar / la respuesta divina, / pues Dios sabe en qué / momento, nos da lo pedido.” (waiting without despair the divine response, God knows the moment in which he will grant what was asked.)

With these words, he reminds we need to trust a response will come in God’s time frame. As much as we like to set our own deadlines, we need to recognize there is a value to waiting.

It may be helpful to remember this in our day-to-day undertakings.

“When will you make an end?” asks Pope Julius II of Michelangelo in the movie, The Agony and the Ecstasy. Impatient for the completion of the Sistine Chapel, the pope pressured the artist to hurry. Michelangelo’s response: “When I’m finished.”

Indeed, a masterpiece can’t always be rushed. Michelangelo’s frescos, on the famous ceiling that now draws more than 20,000 visitors each day, were unveiled four years after he started his work. Consider the community at Sacred Heart Parish in Hidalgo. They spent 13 years to raise and save money for their new church which should be completed by June.

While we may not have been commissioned for something as grand as the Sistine Chapel or to build a church, anything worth doing well requires patience and time. This includes our personal growth and our relationships with others. We are all a work in progress. Perhaps learning to be patient with ourselves, others, and God is part of the journey.

In his prayer “Patient Trust,” the late Jesuit Priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin notes, “Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.”

He ends: “Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.”

We can also take a cue from the parable of the persistent widow and remember “to pray always without becoming weary.” (Luke 18: 1-8)

(Originally published in May 2018 edition of The Valley Catholic newspaper)