Patience - January 8

Patience
Thoughts on the Patient Endurance of Sorrows and Sufferings

A REAL PROOF OF LOVE

The whole work of our sanctification consists in and depends on our conformity to the holy will of God.

God's will is the end of life, and in bending and attuning our own will to that of Almighty God, we serve Him truly and give Him real proof of love.

Obedience, self-denial and humility are all included in this attitude.

"Not my will, but Thine be done";
"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Everyone has his sphere of work marked out for him. We are all parts of the great machine of human life; and when our task is done, and not till then, will our Lord call us home. Thus, while we are still here, our Lord not only seeks fruit at our hands, but seeks a fruit of His own choosing. He Himself was ever leaving one sphere of work for another, as glad to do one task as another, provided He was "about His Father's business" and "doing the will of Him that sent Him."

And we must work on the same lines, though to do so is hard to human nature. We take up a work and get engrossed in it; a grand harvest of good seems assured to us; we do the work well, and it seems "cut out" for us, when of a sudden, by an order of a superior, by a break­down in health, or from some other cause, we are removed, and the work is abandoned and perchance withers and dies. The fruit was very good, but our Lord did not want it then, and did not want it from us.

He "chooses the better part," and calls us elsewhere, and we leave Christ for Christ. A life of active work, full of zeal and occupation, is changed in a moment for a bed of sickness, for a life of inactivity where, apparent­ly, we influence no one for good.

How strange! Yet our Lord wills it, and His interests are at stake in the change. That is enough. I must "leave Christ for Christ"; "Thy will be done, not mine."
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Compiled and Edited by Rev. F. X. Lasance
Author of "My Prayerbook," etc.
1937, Benziger Brothers
Printers to the Holy Apostolic See