Patience – Great CTS Classics by Richard Clarke, SJ
This short booklet (46 pages) is both inspiring and challenging. Patience is a virtue which I (and I suspect many others, in our urgency-driven culture) need to cultivate.
Fr Clarke starts by defining patience as ‘the wiling endurance of what is painful to us’ and clarifying that the virtue of patience is ‘the willing endurance for God’s sake of all that is painful to nature.’ Already there is food for thought, and we are only half way through the first page!
In fact the whole of the first chapter of the booklet, on Patience and Suffering, makes for a profound meditation on the human condition. After defining patience and describing the need for it, Fr Clarke considers The Divine Patience and what tries our patience, before exploring the mystery of suffering. His insights here, whilst absolutely rooted in Scripture and the tradition of the Church, make startling reading to the 21st century reader, to whom the avoidance of suffering is seen as an obvious good. But Fr Clarke reminds us that suffering is ‘one of the best gifts that God can give us,’ and makes it clear why that is the case.
The second chapter is called Patience and Impatience, and contrasts these two approaches to life. In a very practical way, Fr Clarke takes us through the first, second and third degrees of patience, explaining how we may progress in this virtue over time. He contrasts this with impatience, and demonstrates the folly of that vice: again one feels a raw nerve is being touched!
The third chapter explores patience under temptation, with sections on sickness, bereavement, and contempt, and ideas on how to turn each of these into opportunities to unite ourselves with the suffering of Our Lord.
The next chapter roots the ideas of the book very firmly in Sacred Scripture, by considering the examples of Job, Our Lady and Our Lord, as well as the saints, martyrs, angels and holy souls in purgatory. Again, the thinking here is alien to modern thought, precisely because it is looking at life through a truly supernatural lens. It brings one up short and makes one consider what one really believes and how sincerely one is striving for heaven.
Finally Fr Clarke examines the fruits of Patience: Peace, Hope and Joy. He explains how they are related to the practice of this virtue.
On reaching the end of this booklet, which it is hard to put down, one wants to go straight back to the beginning and re-read it. There is so much richness and wisdom in it, and so much that is contrary to the accepted ideas of modern times. But always the fundamental challenge is to imitate Our Lord, who is our Teacher and Example: ‘none ever suffered as He did, and therefore none had to exercise such patience as He exercised.’
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