Love is Patient
If you've been to a marriage ceremony in, say...the past 200 plus years, you've probably heard the reading from 1 Corinthians 13 that tells what love is. This Bible passage is a beautiful description from St. Paul about what it looks like to love someone, as well as what love shouldn’t be. What I'd like to do over the next several weeks is to take a walk through this reading and reflect on each one of the concepts St. Paul uses to describe love and relate them to what I've learned about marriage. I’ll begin with verse 4: Love is patient.
After years of being married and working to raise seven children, I often found myself getting easily frustrated and focusing more on how my wife and children were imposing on my own comfortable patterns and routine than how they were giving me an opportunity to grow. I also got easily irritated by a lack of timeliness, incessant childish babbling, broken personal items touched by other people's clumsy hands, toilet overflow due to massive toilet paper clumps, untimely illnesses, and much more. All these things put my patience to the test, and I failed.
Marriage truly is a sacrament of sacrifice. We are called within this union to learn how to love more deeply, which is displayed through practicing patient service to, and sacrifice for, others. I know that what I'm saying here may sound like an impossible ideal, and it is, if we do it on our own strength. God offers to us, every minute of every day, an abundance of grace. Grace to strengthen us, transform us, and reform us into someone that more closely resembles Himself. Grace builds upon nature. Are we asking for it, and are we open to working with God in building this virtue into our lives?
ACTION STEP: This week, remind yourself each day to react more slowly and to respond to situations with a calm, prayerful mind. Speak to other as you would have them speak to you, and to refrain, when possible, from responding in the heat of emotion. Love calls us to listen more attentively when someone is struggling, to be gentle when we are disappointed, to take a breath when we are rushed, and to see the person, not just the problem.