“Pride and lack of detachment can often manifest itself in impatience. Impatience is often rooted in pride, as it is an expectation that things should go the way I want them to go, that people should behave in a way that I consider responsible, that misfortunes and unforeseen circumstances shouldn’t happen to me, and so on. Detaching ourselves from our own self-centered demands, opinions, judgments, and expectations is an important dimension of growth in humility.
[Saint] Bernard speaks of the importance of patience:
‘So I must put innocence first, and if I can join self-control to it I shall consider myself rich….But if I can add a third to these –patience–I shall be a king.’
[Saint] Francis de Sales point out that it is not uncommon for us to be selectively patient–patient with things we think it is reasonable to be patient with, or that we have a sympathy for, but impatient with the rest. He points out that patience has to become a universal submission to the Will of God, in humility.
‘Do not limit your patience to this or that kind of injury and affliction. Extend it universally to all those God will send you or let happen to you.’
[Saint] Francis points out that selective patience is often rooted in a disguised self-seeking.
‘Some men wish to suffer no tribulations except those connected with honor, for example, or to be wounded or made a prisoner in war, persecuted for religion, or impoverished by some lawsuit they win. Such people do not love tribulation but the the honor that goes with it. The truly patient man and trust servant of God bears up equally under tribulations accompanied by ignominy an those that bring honor.'” –Ralph Martin, The Fulfillment of All Desire, p. 242-43.
Ralph Martin, Fulfillment of All Desires, p. 242-43.