Priorities Give Patient Endurance  

Impatience comes from frustration, being blocked from achieving what we desire. If other people are responsible, we feel like punishing them. 

We show human patience if we reprove them without anger, saying only what it is true, doing or requiring only what is fair. But Patient Endurance, the divine “Fruit of the Spirit,” calls us to respond with two other Fruits of the Spirit: Kindness and Generosity (to examine later). 

What makes Patient Endurance possible is the priorities taught by Jesus. We are frustrated when we cannot get what we want. Jesus teaches us to prefer something we can always get, which is to make credible our desire for a relationship. No matter what another does or fails to do, we respond in a way that says a good relationship with that person is more important to us than whatever the person did or failed to do.  

Obviously, it takes two to relate. Even God cannot preserve the relationship of shared life with someone choosing to do what is incompatible with it—”mortal sin.” But God’s “enduring love” (hesed and emet, Exodus 34:6; John 1:17) responds even to evil with actions that reveal his desire to restore the relationship, climaxing in the Patient Endurance of Jesus’s crucifixion. 

Jesus says no earthly good should be worth more to us than a good relationship with another. He mentions three specifically: the respect due us, our possessions, and our time (Matthew 5:39, 40, 41). He tells us to make our relationship our first priority. This enables Patient Endurance. 

To show Patient Endurance, prioritize.  

— Fr. David M. Knight

View today’s Mass readings on the USCCB website here

Easter season is the time to focus on the Holy Spirit. Starting on Easter Sunday, we will look carefully at how the Spirit is proclaimed, invoked, and presented to us in the Mass. Lex orandi, lex credendi: “As the Church prays, so she believes.”

After that, we will reflect on the Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 11:2; Galatians 5:22), and at how the Spirit enters the life of those who believe.

As you read these reflections, ask for the gift of Understanding. Ask to really understand what you believe, what you see and hear at Mass. Go deeper into understanding the Mass than you ever have before. We experience the Faith when we become aware of its mystery. We hope you reflect deeply on the Mass and Gifts of the Holy Spirit, and find yourself more and more drawn into the mysteries of our Lord in the Mass and in His Gifts.