June 3

Monday of the Second Week after Easter

Let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. S. James 1:4.

ALL other virtues and graces have need of patience to perfect or secure them. Patience interposes herself, and receives and stops every dart which the evil one aims at them. "Patience is the root and guardian of all virtue," says S. Gregory; impatience is the enemy of all. Impatience disquiets the soul, makes her weary of conflict, ready to lay aside her armour and to leave difficult duty. Impatience, by troubling the smooth mirror of the soul, hinders her from reflecting the face of God; by its din it hinders her from hearing the voice of God. It makes the soul outrun or fall short of the will of God. Impatience listens to nothing, heeds nothing, fears nothing, hopes nothing, judges aright of nothing, perseveres in nothing except in restlessness. Impatience is a burden to itself, distrusts man, rebels against God. It shakes every virtue, and enters into almost every sin. It casts aside every remedy for itself or for any other fault. Impatience made Cain a murderer, and Absalom a parricide, and Judas a Deicide. Impatience, not waiting for God, turns even goods into evils. Jeroboam waited not for the goods which God had promised him; he forfeited them, destroyed his own house, which he wished to raise, and left of his ambition no memorial save that it was he "who did sin and who made Israel to sin."

Though dark my path, and sad my lot, Let me be still and murmur not, Or breathe the prayer divinely taught, Thy will be done.

Renew my will from day to-day, Blend it with Thine, and take away All that now makes it hard to say Thy will be done.