In addition to being patient with ourselves, we must exercise this virtue with those we deal with more frequently, especially if we have a greater obligation to help them in their formation, in an illness, etcetera. We have to reckon with the defects of those around us. Understanding and fortitude will help us to be calm, while still correcting when it is opportune and at the most indicated moment. To wait a little time to correct, to give a good answer, to smile..., can make that our words arrive to the heart of those people, that otherwise would remain closed, and we will be able to help them much more, with greater effectiveness.
Impatience makes it difficult to live together and also makes possible help and correction ineffective.
"Keep on drawing out the same exhortations," St. John Chrysostom recommends to us, "and never lazily; always act with kindness and grace. Do you not see how carefully painters sometimes erase their strokes, sometimes retouch them, when they try to reproduce a beautiful face? Do not be won over by painters.
For if they take so much care in painting a bodily image, all the more reason why we, who try to form the image of a soul, will leave no stone unturned in order to make it perfect ".
We must be particularly constant and patient in the apostolate.
People need time and God has patience: at every moment he gives his grace, forgives and encourages us to move forward. With us he had and has this boundless patience, and we must have it with the friends we want to bring to the Lord, even if at times it seems that they do not listen, that they are not interested in the things of God. Let us not abandon them because of this. On these occasions it will be necessary to intensify our prayer and mortification, and also our charity and our sincere friendship.
None of our friends, at any time of his life, should give the Lord the answer of this paralytic man: "I have no one to help me".
For "this could assure, unhappily! many sick and paralyzed of the spirit, who can serve... and must serve.
"Lord, may I never remain indifferent to souls, "we ask.
Let us examine today in our prayer whether we are concerned about the people who accompany us on life's journey; whether we are concerned about their formation, or whether, on the contrary, we have become accustomed to their defects as if they were something irremediable, and at the same time whether we are patient.
Moreover, in this Lent it is good for us to remember that through mortification we can also atone for the sins of others and merit in some way, for them, the grace of faith, of conversion, of a greater dedication to God.
In Jesus Christ is the remedy for all the ills that afflict humanity. In him all can find health and life. He is the source of life-giving waters. This is what the prophet Ezekiel tells us in the reading of the Mass: These waters flow down to the region of the Levant, they will go down to the Arabah and flow into the sea, the sea of putrid waters, and they will cleanse it. All the living creatures that swarm where the stream flows will have life, and there will be fish in abundance; when these waters flow there, the sea will be cleansed and there will be life wherever the stream flows. Christ converts into life what was formerly death, and into virtue, deficiency and error.
Hablar con Dios