In a world where speed and instant gratification rules, it’s important to remember that patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.
My mother taught me the gift of patience. There were times when each of her seven little Australians needed her and we had to wait for her attention. The times I especially valued were when she took me out by myself to have lunch when I was in Year 12 in the few hours before the afterschool mayhem of cordial, biscuits and sibling skirmishes. We all learned to patiently wait our turn, although the occasional outbreak of sookiness or real need may have briefly changed the order of the queue.
One of the practical things she bequeathed to us was knowing the value of the lay-by. Here, we would pay in instalments for items that we wanted to purchase. Instant gratification, the modus operandi of almost everything today, was simply not done in a household of hand-me-downs and sharing and a roster of little chores. On my student stipend I would lay-by clothes and manchester, thrilled when I had finally paid them off after a wait of three months or more.
WE WANT, NOW
Today, patience seems to be in decline. We cannot queue without getting antsy, we want things yesterday. Speed is preferred to substance, urgency prioritised over importance. Waiting is for those whose time is not important. Waiting is for those who miss out. With the pervasive uptake of digital technology, we start harrumphing if our computer takes a few extra seconds to connect. The speed of life today is eroding our capacity for patience, for the slower joys, for the time things take.
Patience is a virtue, a slow ripening skill that builds capacity as time passes. We have forgotten what it is like to wait for a letter from overseas now that an email can ping in from London or Lisbon or Lagos. My patience is honed daily as I wait for buses with a book on the go, knowing that it is not the bus driver’s fault that he is 18 minutes late. With this amplitude of time, I have the opportunity to look around me, watching the world and its exchanges of pleasantries.
Saint Augustine noted that patience is the companion of wisdom. His mother, Saint Monica, the patron saint of patience and perseverance, had long waited and prayed for her son to reform and drop his wayward habits. We increasingly value patience the older we get, when we have put behind us the impulsivity and hubris of youth. Through trial and error, we come to know its worth.
MARSHMALLOW EXPERIMENT
The famed 1960s Stanford University marshmallow experiment aimed to see how children could exercise discipline and delayed gratification when placed in a room with marshmallows on the table. A longitudinal study proved that those who were able to refrain from gobbling up the sweet treats were more likely to have positive life outcomes compared to those who did not have the capacity to deny themselves the immediate satisfaction of eating them.
Delaying something is not necessarily denial but often a fruitful experience that provides rich dispositional and spiritual change.
I see patience exercised by the Prep teacher who repeats instructions to little ones all day and who helps tie their shoelaces as they prance about, happy to be at school at last. I see patience as parents persist in helping with homework and the explanations over equations to a tearful teenager. I see the patience and kindness of staff in aged care homes who gently redirect residents to their rooms or to lunch, who accept that patience is part of the job in dignifying the elderly. I see the patience of writers, artists and musicians whose creative work takes time to grow. I see the patience of gardeners who plant in one season and wait hopefully for the blooming and budding of the next.
PATIENCE OF MARY
I see the patience of Mary as she carried her child for nine months. I see her maternal patience as she waited for 12-year-old Jesus as he talked to the rabbis in the Temple and pondered much in her heart. I see her patience as she saw her son challenge the religious hierarchy and proclaim a new kingdom where all were welcome.
The gift of patience is cultivated when we wait well. Patience is playing the long game, denying short-termism and its quick results and knowing that in the fullness of time a more composed and expansive resolution will result. Sometimes it is about forbearance as we manage to deal with a situation that is exacting. It is also about humility and self-control and the power of endurance and acceptance.
Each year, during Advent, we celebrate a joyful waiting, the anticipation of the birth of the Christ-child, a tradition which grounds us in patience and constancy.
Prayer itself is an act of patience as we turn to God and pray for many of the same things year after year.
William Shakespeare wrote in Othello, ‘How poor are they that have not patience. What wound did ever heal but by degrees?’ Sometimes the simple passing of time facilitates the imperceptible flourishing of patience and equanimity in our lives. It can heal our hurt and make us whole again.
Rudyard Kipling in If writes, ‘If you can wait and not be tired by waiting’. This is a reminder that in waiting there is a grace, a new fluency of feeling, which does not arise when things are completed quickly or without due thought. Patience is also a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is calm in chaos; the thoughtful response rather than the hurried one, the waiting for the right or propitious time, graced with expectation.
THE RIGHT SEASON
‘To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven’ (Ecclesiastes 3:1) chimes with the notion of patience by shifting our focus from instant gratification and the satisfaction of our desires to a divine timing occasioned by acceptance, gratitude and endurance.
Our turn or time will come as we wait patiently in the love of the Lord.
Ann Rennie is a Melbourne writer, teacher and former REC. She believes in the Good News and the power of words to change the world.
This article first appeared in the winter 2026 edition of Madonna magazine.
