Fifth Sunday of Lent
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March 18, 2018Contentment and conviction. Last week I spoke of these qualities as the very heart of the sixth and seventh steps of humility respectively: contentment with God in poor circumstances and conviction concerning one’s spiritual poverty. These dispositions are signs of fruition, fruition of our life in Christ to which we have tried to be faithful---with the emphasis more on God’s transforming work than on our own efforts.
So let’s step back now into the battleground of the fourth step of humility, the battleground of patience which is an area that does require a great deal of actual effort. St. Benedict expressed the principle of patience in the Prologue: “We share now by patience in the sufferings of Christ that we may have a share in his kingdom.” The phrase, “By patience”, is Benedict’s original touch to St. Paul’s well known formula. In the fourth step he makes it concrete by instructing that the difficulties that come our way in the monastic life, should be embraced patiently with a quiet mind. The difficulties as expressed in the fourth step are twofold, those that come our way through the vow of obedience and those that come to us as we strive to live out Jesus’ teachings expressed in the Sermon on the Mount or by Paul: for example, turning the other cheek, going the second mile, bearing with false brothers and sisters, blessing those who curse us. We are reminded here that justice is not our ultimate goal, not even loving our neighbor as ourselves, but rather, loving as Christ loved us, he in whose life we were baptized. He calls us into the great mystery of a love without limits, of an unconditional love. He asks us to try, day after day, minute after minute to live his way. He doesn’t ask us to succeed on our own efforts but to try so that his grace may eventually transform us; may, as St. Gertrude said, supply for the huge part we can’t do on our own. Then, we discover as did Paul, that by the grace of God we live, now not ourselves, but Christ in us.
In RB 72 we come to another practice of patience---the most practical in the Rule as far as I see it and certainly the most demanding: “to support with the greatest patience one another’s weaknesses of body or behavior,” which means basically to support those limitations of others which can’t be changed or which take a long time to change. The word “support” translates the Latin “tolerent” from which is derived “tolerate.” It’s good to ask oneself how tolerant one is—or how intolerant. As far as limitations of body, generally these are easier to tolerate, but still not always easy. I remember standing in choir next to someone who was older and sang very flatly. The temptation might be to flee such a situation, but I reminded myself every day that this could serve as my purgatory of the ear. Why miss such a golden purification! And then I would wonder what particular purgatory I was putting other Sisters through. The personality trait that irks me, can I tolerate it patiently for love of that person? And the character fault that emerges now and then even if the person overcomes it sometimes, can I bear it or is my consuming energy to blot it out or to flee from it? And a person’s obvious faults, do I see everything she does or says in light of her faults, or is there a space in me that can look at her through the eyes of God and see something more, something other than the fault. That St. Benedict put this admonition in the peak passage of his Rule, words that are not a Scripture quote per se, but which obviously were born from long practice in living the words, “Love is patient,” means something significant. He is asking us as our guide and father in the spiritual life to take patience seriously, both in difficulties and in relationships. This, as he tells us, is our main way to share in the sufferings of Christ, a daily and mainly undramatic way, and yet one that will make all the difference in our monastic lives. How deeply we are transformed into Christ depends a great deal on our internalization of patience or lack of it.