"In my youth I came to know the "God of hope". Now, in old age, I know the "God of patience". Hope brings us excitement, while patience is arduous. But if in hope we approach something new, it is only in patience that we hold on to it. In steadfast patience, hope becomes lasting."   Jürgen Moltmann

The Greeks use the terms hypomonè (waiting) and paskein (patience), which refer to a person's capacity to pause because something important is happening, meanwhile reflecting and perceiving how it will come about before it actually does. This means a vital kind of pausing, because something is happening, and it matters to wait for it to happen before acting. Finally, here is another expression rich in meaning – makrothymìa (length of spirit), which allows us to look toward the future. The patient person is the one whose gaze is turned forward, looking toward the future. Cicero  in  his work Partitiones oratoriae wrote to his son: "What suits the troubles that lie ahead is called fortitude; what endures and sees things through to the end, that is called patience."

It is not easy to understand, says Pope Francis, what patience is. We can say that patience is not the attitude of the defeated. Christian patience does not mean being defeated, does not mean falling into despair. Patience is a virtue of people who are on the move, not of those who are shut in and standing still. When you are on the road, many things happen to you, and they are not always good for you.

Bertolt Brecht gives us the old motif of the journey through life, on which a hold-up has occurred. But although something has got stuck, the traveller must still press on, even though the destination is no longer guaranteed. He has stepped outside his guaranteed security and does not know what awaits him. No one guarantees him any longer that he will be able to continue the journey. The punctured tyre marks an "existential hole". He is seized by a sense of emptiness and disorientation. It is as though uncertainty, restlessness and anxiety are coming to meet him. And yet that strange restlessness remains, as if on this road there is still a horizon of hope. Doubt hangs over the past and the future is uncertain: "A Change of Wheel" – I sit by the roadside/ The driver changes the wheel/ I do not like the place I have come from/ I do not like the place I am going to/ Why with impatience do I watch him changing the wheel?

The impatient person spends life fleeing from one city to another, from one project to another, from one situation to another, from one misunderstanding to another. What matters is not to stop. The impatient person has invented continuous movement, permanent restlessness and accelerated mobility. For the only thing we long for is movement as such, displacement for its own sake, flight from a place we do not like to another that, precisely because we do not like it either, immediately drives us to keep moving. That is why we resist so strongly having to stop, even for the time it takes to change a wheel, a time during which we have no remedy but to inevitably put to ourselves the most obvious and most terrible question: "Why so much impatience?" Move on, do not be still, do not let that calm and silence go on so long that we realise our flight has no meaning, like running across the deck in the direction opposite to the one the ship is following.

Blaise Pascal says: "Man is not interested in the prey, but in the hunt; he does not seek things, but the pursuit of things." What matters most is not to stop. And the faster we go, the better. Why? We are like a skater gliding at great speed, knowing more or less vaguely that the frozen layer is too weak to bear his weight. If we only stopped to think about it, the ice would break and we would fall through into the frozen water, into ourselves, into our own emptiness, into death.

And what do we gain by fleeing? We recall the well-known passage from Sartre: "I flee in order to ignore, but I cannot ignore that I am fleeing; and flight from anguish is nothing other than a way of becoming aware of anguish." Despair would be a solution inspired by that paradoxical law of vertigo, according to which there are those who throw themselves from a tower for fear of falling from it. This is the reverse assumption, another form of impatience: instead of rushing toward the goal, instead of regarding it as already attained, the impatient person immediately halts his race, denying that any goal exists for him at all, arguing that every possible number is at the same distance from the infinite, from the unattainable.

What tells me a great deal about patience as a virtue is the attitude of parents, the Pope continues, when a sick or disabled child is born to them, and who then say: "Thank God the child is alive!" Those are the patient ones. And throughout their whole life they love that child completely – to the end. It is not easy to care for a child with a disability or illness over many long years. But the joy of having the child gives you the strength to go forward. And that is patience, not despair. It is a virtue that is born when we find ourselves on the road, on the move.  The word patience means "to hold up, to carry on one's shoulders". It is an attitude that requires effort, because the one who is patient must carry, does not set problems aside, does not give up easily, does not avoid suffering but bears it, and does so "with joy", "full of joy", as the apostle says. And he carries not only his own burdens but also the problems and difficulties of the other. That is the true path that leads to real and deep communion.

There is a psychological test, known as the Marshmallow Test, when we speak of the theme of patience. The developmental psychologist Walter Mischel ran an experiment on how to delay gratification. He would sit children at a table in an empty room. In front of the child was a plate with a marshmallow on it. He then explained to the child that they could eat the marshmallow at once, or they could wait. He would then leave the room and return after some time. If the child had not eaten the marshmallow by then, they would get a second one. Successful waiting was to be rewarded by doubling the sweet. Some children, without hesitation, stuffed the marshmallow straight into their mouths. Some stood up and walked around the room or talked to themselves. Others tried to sleep. There were children who ate the marshmallow from underneath, tasting it, then putting it back on the plate so that the bite could not be seen. Some managed to wait a while, but not long enough for the psychologist to return. And some children overcame the period of temptation, waited for the psychologist to come back, and got their second marshmallow. Some then put both in their mouths at once. When, thirteen years later, Walter Mischel asked what had become of these children, whose waiting skills he had measured, he came upon a startling discovery. Those who had been able to wait longer and delay taking the sweet were now among the better adjusted, more self-confident, more socially competent people. Further research in later years showed that early self-control proved to be an important indicator of professional success. Those who, as kindergarten children, had been able to bear the delay of reward, later achieved greater success in various areas of life. These people showed better self-control in stressful situations, greater tolerance of frustration, and perseverance in difficult and demanding moments. Matthias Sutter calls this emotional discipline.

The book that Monsignor Felice Accrocca wrote during the quarantine of the pandemic's first phase bears the title "In Praise of Patience". And he asks himself: "What is patience?" It is the ability to live well and at peace with those situations that God asks us to live through. It does not mean merely enduring, which, unlike patience, is a more passive attitude. Clearly, none of this is easy. And yet patience can be learned: it requires constant practice with oneself. "Above all," explains Monsignor Accrocca, "one needs to listen: in fact, very often we do not really know how to take up the other person's perspective, but instead read and filter him according to our own wishes." The problem arises when the expected response does not come quickly, which causes tension and conflict in the dynamics of a relationship. As if immediate satisfaction necessarily had to follow a word. "Impatience," he continues, "often arises precisely because no one is able to wait and everyone wants to keep everything under control at all times. Patience, on the other hand, requires accepting things when they are not under our control, and accepting other people's time."

Patience therefore means acceptance, not leaving it to another person to face the  handling   of the problem, to take the burden of the problem upon oneself: "I take it upon myself, this is my difficulty, this is my problem. Will I suffer because of it? Certainly! But I will take it upon myself." Patience therefore means "taking it upon oneself". In life we must face a great many boundaries, limits. The impatient person does not want them, ignores them, because he does not understand that through boundaries he can enter into dialogue with others. The one who is patient knows that boundaries allow him to enter into dialogue with others. It is therefore important to know that we have one Father who is patient with us, who forgives us, who has time for us, for our conversion. God the Father patiently waits for our time to come, when we will be able to carry the burdens of others, forgive, and love.

St Cyprian says: "I shall speak of patience and set forth its benefits and blessings. Without patience you cannot do what you hear and what you are taught. I find nothing more useful for life or greater for glory than that we should cultivate patience above every other observance. Even the philosophers profess to be guided by patience. But as their wisdom is false, so too is their patience. For how could one be wise or patient who does not know the wisdom or the patience of God, when God himself warns those who present themselves as wise in the eyes of the world, and says: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart (1 Cor 1:19). And so the blessed apostle Paul, sent to convert and teach the pagans, exhorts and instructs, saying: See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. (Col 2:8). And in another place he says: Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written: He catches the wise in their craftiness. And again: The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile. (1 Cor 3:18–20). Therefore, if wisdom there is not genuine, neither can patience be genuine. If the wise man is the one who is humble and gentle, we see that the philosophers are neither humble nor gentle, but rather thoroughly self-satisfied. Accordingly, those who are self-satisfied are not pleasing to God. It is clear that there is no true patience where there is a proud striving after coveted freedom and a shameless boasting of a bared, half-naked heart.

We, however, dearest brethren, who are wise not in words but in deeds, do not display our wisdom in outward show but in truth. We, who recognise the inwardness of virtue and not mere boasting, who do not speak of many signs but live them. As servants and worshippers of God, let us show the patience that we learn from heavenly teaching, with spiritual obedience. This virtue we hold in common through God. There patience begins, there glory and dignity take their source. Their source and their greatness proceed from God the Father. Man must revere what is pleasing to God; divine holiness entrusts to us the good that it loves. If our Christ is also God the Father, let us follow the same patience of Christ and of the Father, for servants ought to be those who obey, and sons those who are worthy.

But what, and how great, is the patience in God, who, though his goodness and honour are insulted, most patiently endures sacrilegious rites, earthly images and pagan temples set up by human hands? Over the good and the wicked alike, God grants that day be born, that the light of the sun shine, and that the fields be watered with rain, equally upon the just and the unjust. No one is excluded from God's blessings; the same rain is given equally to the just and the unjust!"

Patience means accepting the law of gradualness. In nature there is a law of gradation and growth. William Shakespeare wrote: "How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?" During yet another walk, Kafka returns to the subject and says to his young friend Gustav Janouch: "Patience is the key to every situation. You must have sympathy for everything, renounce everything, yet at the same time remain patient and tolerant … There is no bending or breaking. It is only a question of mastery, which begins with mastering oneself. This cannot be avoided. To abandon that path is always the same as falling apart. You must accept every single thing patiently and let it grow within you." Or, as Rainer Maria Rilke so beautifully puts it in Letters to a Young Poet: "be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart …do not seek now the answers which cannot be given you."

In his work "The Spiritual Combat", Scupoli tells us how we are to attain and grow in the virtue of patience. The first step is Recollection: "Recall to mind what it is that passes through your head, that makes you impatient." Certain feelings and impulses overpower the will and reason – for instance, grief or shame. Once we have established what it is within us that makes us impatient, we stop it by forming a resolve to stop it. It is very important to repeat the whole process many times – recollection and the forming of a resolve – until we feel progress. The repeated practice of the desired behaviour is a necessary process for a habit to be formed and the desired virtue to be gained. This must be done in everyday recurring situations – in traffic, in study, in household chores, and so on. He holds that in a sense we ought to "seek out and desire" such situations in which we could practise patience. Only then can we feel real progress.

In his letters from prison to his fiancée, Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks of the difficulties of waiting and the necessity of patience, and of how their relationship must be viewed from the perspective of trust in God's guidance: " This time of waiting is,  from God's point of view, an incredibly precious time /  The thought that you and I  patiently wait for each other in love is my daily comfort". True waiting lasts throughout a whole life. It is victory over the enmity of space, which means separation, and over the enmity of time, which means mortality. Waiting is an art, one almost forgotten in our impatient age. We must wait in order to arrive at the greater, deeper and dearest things in the world, where nothing happens in a hurry, but everything has its own time of conception, growth and fulfilment.

Patience is not a passive virtue realised in passive waiting, but the ability to do many things calmly, without frustration or anger; calm yet strenuous work, carried out in the conviction that the effort will pay off sooner or later. It is not waiting in passivity, but neither is it activity that relies on itself alone. Patience is a wise and constructive attitude that proves victorious in many life situations.                                                                                                                                                                                                It is precisely for this reason that Job the sufferer wants life to go on. He is taken as an example of patient perseverance, even though in the process he questions himself – "Have I strength to wait?" (Job 6:11) – before loss, anguish and death. And he shows impatience right up to the moment when God begins to speak. Then waiting turns into expectation, for through suffering he encountered God, through suffering he sought reasons for faith, for his suffering had gained meaning. Dragan Nimac says that patience is a time of reflection, a time of planning, of working out a strategy, and that it implies the capacity for composure in the face of desperate situations, for it is only through long patience that we often find what we have long been seeking. It is the ability to do many things calmly, without frustration or anger, in the conviction that a favourable outcome will come in the end, that the effort will pay off. In a sense it demands change; it is not passive waiting but the link between that which is no longer and that which is not yet. And it is precisely this new thing that is the fruit of patience.

Jesus embodies divine patience; he rebukes his impatient friends, and shows an example of patience and love toward sinners which his disciples, too, must follow. The model of all patience is the Passion of Christ, and the bearing of suffering illumines every suffering and gives it meaning.