A habit of discernment – prayer and attention to God’s call – is important to cultivate.
Patience is not a popular virtue. It encourages us to put off acting and to wait for the right time – which may never come. In anxious times we would often like to bring things to a head, provoke a crisis, and resolve the situation once and for all. If we wait and wait until something turns up, we fear that the only things that will turn up will be the withering leaves on the branches of our lives.
Our reluctance to be patient is reflected in the origin of the word. Patience comes from the same Latin root as passive and being a patient. These words suggest that if we are patient, we shall not be active but acted on, and so not fully alive.
To be patient, too, can sometimes prevent us from living fully. If we are hospital patients, it’s helpful to be able to rely on the advice of skilled doctors and to follow their instructions. Yet, particularly when patients spend much time in care, the division between carers and patients can have destructive effects on both. It might deprive the patients of a voice and lead carers to see them as children, so impeding them from living a full life and taking initiatives. Good hospitals now put a strong emphasis on the initiative and action of patients.
INITIATIVE
Given all this, we might think it much better to be impatient and to always take the initiative in shaping our lives. If we are gardeners we might be encouraged by the richly-coloured impatiens flowers, whose seedpods contain a spring that, when touched, flings the tiny seeds all around the plant and on to the insects that touch them. This impatience machine makes it more likely that the seeds will propagate.
Yet impatience also has its risks.
We soon realise the urge to take action can lead to things becoming worse. It can break fragile relationships instead of strengthening them. It can lead us also to overlook important factors in a situation or to judge people wrongly. A moment’s impatience can lead to months of picking up the broken pieces.
Impatience, too, can be born out of anxiety. When we worry, we are often tempted to act quickly to remove our anxiety. Anything seems better than waiting. We convince ourselves that we are acting for the benefit of people affected by our decision, but afterwards we may reluctantly recognise we were driven by our own need to act decisively.
Queen Gertrude may seem to have been a flawed counsellor, but her advice to her son Hamlet was wise: ‘O gentle son, upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience.’
In Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace, the old Russian General Kutuzov is a heroic character. In the frenzy of war and the pressures on every side to act decisively against Napoleon’s troops, Kutuzov keeps waiting.
WORDS OF ADVICE
His three-word advice to all who press him to attack is ‘time and patience’. In the novel he is a model of self-knowledge and of waiting to act. His policy eventually leads to the safety of Russia and the destruction of the French army as it is drawn increasingly deeply into the immobility and starvation of a Russian winter. The more heroic option of rushing to fight is eventually shown to be rash.
For most of us who will never find a place in plays and novels, patience gives time for self-reflection and for finding where we are being led. In the third century the Romans had devised an effective persecution aimed at killing or discrediting the leaders of the church and destroying the books and vessels of worship. They targeted the bishops and then intimidated other Christians. Bishops were forced to weigh the call to follow Jesus, either by waiting to be arrested and killed and perhaps deny Christ under extreme torture or to flee their towns to help the Christian communities to survive later. In both cases many Christians were demoralised.
At the end of the persecution, some leading bishops who had escaped were accused of denying Christ by fellow Christians who had been maimed by torture. They replied by reflecting that in the Gospels Jesus had predicted his decisive trial and his desire for it to come quickly but had also fled to Galilee after Herod had killed John the Baptist.
BETTER TO WAIT
The bishops concluded that it was not right to rush headlong into torture and death, but it was better to wait until it was forced on them. Jesus showed that it was important to reflect on whether God’s time had come. Ultimately, patience meant waiting on God’s call and invitation.
The debate in the early church shows the interplay of patience and of impatience in Christians’ lives. It is right to have great desires and to want to see them quickly put into practice. Jesus desired to cast fire on the earth and wished that it were blazing already.
It is also important, however, to wait on God’s call before acting. We do that by a habit of prayer, of noticing our desires and fears that are at work in us, and so judging what seems right. That habit of discernment is not usually an agonised search but a matter of attention and review as to what is Christ-like, and of consultation with other prudent people.
We can never know whether our decision will later be seen to have been right. But we can be confident that it was rightly made.
Ultimately patience is not measured by the amount of time but by the quality of attention.
This article first appeared in the winter 2026 edition of Madonna magazine.
Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ is an editorial consultant at Jesuit Communications
