Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [150]
We have to reckon with a space of time interpolating itself between our volitive decision, and the fulfillment of our purpose, and accept it as a reality imposed by God.
The impatient man insists on ignoring this reality; he behaves as though it were in his power to make the trees grow more quickly and the earth revolve more quickly around the sun. Impatience renders us hard, unkind, masterful, and in some circumstances, violent. It always implies a loss of depth.
Impatience differs from our legitimate deep yearning for the realization of a noble good
It should on no account be confused, therefore, with a consuming desire or a feverish yearning as such; with the deep tension of the soul towards a noble good, which may cause us to live through the minutes of waiting as though they were hours. Our fiery inward motion towards a high aim ardently longed for—such as seeing again a dearly beloved person after a long separation, embarking on a beautiful journey which fills us with magic anticipations, or the inception of a gratifying work which our mind has been passionately engaged in planning—should be well distinguished from impatience proper.
To be sure, even such a fine aspiration must never dominate us to the degree of a complete possession. We must-always place everything in the hands of God—“Not as I will but as Thou wilt.” But this inward tension towards a high good is something valuable by itself; it lacks the distinctive marks of impatience proper—it does not generate anger, scowling indignation, masterful rebelliousness. It should—it can—be informed and transfigured by an attitude of serene humility which keeps us constantly aware of the truth that the fulfillment of any aim of man is a gift of God.
This kind of tension differs from impatience proper by the fact, also, that it presupposes a high good as its object, whereas the impatience we have in mind mostly refers to trivial goods. Moreover, the former’s sphere of objects includes goods whose realization is entirely independent of ourselves, whereas the latter bears more generally on such goods as we can at least help to bring about.
What irritates an impatient person is, above all, the too sluggish effect of his orders, his actions, his attempts to influence men’s behavior or the development of a situation. His ill temper expresses a revolt against the relative and limited character of his effectiveness.
The foregoing analysis of impatience may help us now to describe the virtue of Christian patience, insofar as it refers to the securing of pleasurable goods or ego gratifications as such, to the endurance of pains or boredom, or again, to the attainment of legitimate natural goods of the higher kind.
Patience respects the hierarchy of goods
The patient man, in the first place, preserves the right order in the scale of his interests. The requirements of the moment, no matter how imperious, can never displace or overshadow his attention to higher values. The intensity of his attention to a thing will not be determined by its dynamic appeal, its aggressive presence at a given moment or the noise with which it is advertised, but by the objective weight of its content. His emotional accents are ordered in a fashion proportionate to the objective order of values. He possesses a prompt readiness to bear any cross that he cannot avert from himself without injury to charity or infringement of some duty.
He has the art of waiting, and he knows that, though he might justly reproach somebody with having caused him a needless loss of time, a loveless rebuke sometimes amounts to a greater evil before God than a