Love is patient

I apologise if you're finding me unoriginal or devoid of new ideas. However originality is rather overrated, in my view. Besides as the wise man said, a long time ago, there's nothing new under the sun. I think my favourite Shakespeare play is Twelfth Night, and one of my favourite speeches is by the disguised Viola speaking to Count Orsino, with whom she's in love and who has asked her about her supposed sister's love (It's complicated, as they say!). Viola is talking about herself:

Parminder Singh as Viola

"... She never told her love...
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?"
I understood this connection between love and patience better when I read one of the blogs I like best.

The post was called simply "Patience". This appeared today in the iBenedictine blog.

Patience is often described as the Benedictine’s fourth vow. It is a theme that occurs again and again in the Rule, where we are reminded that we ‘share by patience in the sufferings of Christ’. (RB Prol. 50) The newcomer to monastic life is to be ‘tested in all patience’.  (RB 58.11) Indeed, patiently bearing with delays and contradictions is one of the signs looked for as the mark of a genuine vocation. It all sounds rather wonderful until one has to practise it. For the plain truth is that patience is hard work. It means embracing suffering, not just stoically putting up with it, and doing so with a quiet heart. (RB 7. 35) Patience requires a great deal of trust and humility as well as self-control.

Patience, trust, humility: these are not qualities that our society cultivates or values very much. We prefer to be self-assertive, thrusting not trusting, testing everything by our own standards and rather despising those who are patient and humble, as thought they were milksops. In fact, it takes real strength of character to be patient, to accept adversity quietly, without anger or upset. Similarly, trust and humility are not for wimps but for those who are brave enough to look themselves in the face and know themselves for what they are.

Today each one of us will be given the opportunity to exercise a little patience, to show a little trust and be a little humble. Are we big enough to meet the challenge?


I thought that there are some really radical thoughts here, which challenge our normal values. "... it takes real strength of character to be patient, to accept adversity quietly, without anger or upset." I like too the perspective that humility is a sign of strength, not a wimpish quality. I was struck by that because I'd just read a message from a friend in New Zealand who says he's neither a Catholic, nor Christian nor a Muslim. He told me about a student of his, whom he encouraged into the priesthood: "This man was simply good. Everything about him in class or in my office radiated goodness. His whole method was submission to discipline. When his MA coursework was completed, he appeared in my office and said, ‘All I want is to have you train me, and I will write my thesis on whatever you tell me to do.’ There is a wonderful story that follows, but suffice it to say, he covered himself with scholarly honour. ... Now he teaches Chinese Catholic students in ..., where we met. His humility is his badge. I admire him without reservation."