HOW THE BLESSED MARY MERITED HEAVEN THROUGH HER HEROIC PATIENCE
St. Lious de Monfort highlights the many attributes that make the Mother of God so special and includes patience as one of her main virtues.
Patience is the virtue that enables us to endure all the wrongs and misfortunes of life without discouragement, but instead with hope and trust in God.
Heroic patience means sitting with life’s questions until God decides to answer them (one at a time). We want all the answers to our vocations and future today. “Lord show me what to do now and then tell me what to do for tomorrow, and while you’re at it, five years from now! Who will I marry? Where will I live? What will I do?”
Today we want instant answers to every question. A question comes up at dinner, and out come the cell phones. We search and answers are instant. But it’s not that way with in the spiritual life. Heroic patience is a call to wait on the Lord to reveal the next step, the next stage of the journey, when He knows the time is right. It means leaving room so that God may surprise you.
Heroic patience means living in the present, letting our vocations (or our lives) unfold. There may be twists and turns, and even some wonderful unexpected surprises in life. And all that is okay.
When we drive, we only see as far as our headlights, but we make the whole journey that way. We only get to see the next step, one at a time. Mary’s next step was to go visit and share her blessing with her cousin Elizabeth. Mary’s Annunciation was big news…the biggest news ever actually. Can you keep a secret when it’s big? It must’ve been so tempting to tell everyone.
But She didn’t even tell Joseph, she let God himself do that. She patiently waited and went to Elizabeth. She let God lead. He would choose with whom She’d share her joy. She made a journey that must have allowed her much more time to ponder this good news in her heart. And to ask God who needed to hear it. Heroic patience reminds us that who we share with (and what we choose to share) is important.
Elizabeth, was a trusted older holy confidant who could offer good advice, and maybe help Mary make sense of what she experienced. The two would help each other give glory to God. Elizabeth would respect this news and consider this news precious. We may have an experience in prayer, get an insight or direction from God and want to run off and tell someone. But it is better to stay in prayer and ask, “Lord who do you want me to share this with?” Who is it meant for? Maybe, it might even be a secret of the King that needs guarding. Maybe I need, like Our Lady, to ponder it a bit more in my heart before speaking about it to anybody other than my “Elizabeth.”
Heroic patience lets God lead in relating graces and gives God all the glory. Remember what happened in the Gospel. Jesus healed people suffering with leprosy and asked them to keep silent about it, but they didn’t. It wasn’t time for certain towns to know about his healing power. But they went off and told many people what the Lord had done. They told so many that Jesus was no longer able to enter towns openly. They got ahead of God’s plan. Heroic patience means not getting ahead of God’s plan.
Mary lived with Jesus in Nazareth for about thirty years, yet she didn’t brag and ruin God’s plan. She felt no need to knock on doors of her noisy neighbors and say, “Hey, I’m God’s mom, little God is sleeping right now. Please quiet down in here.”
Letting God’s plan unfold, she was patient. She practiced heroic patience in dealing with non-believers like her relatives. We learn later in the Gospel that Jesus’ relatives thought he was crazy or possessed. How it must have hurt Our Lady to know some of her relatives thought her Son was possessed. But she wasn’t called to convince them. Maybe she was just supposed to love them and pray for them and leave the rest to God.
Heroic patience lets God lead in relating graces and gives God all the glory. Remember what happened in the Gospel. Jesus healed people suffering with leprosy and asked them to keep silent about it, but they didn’t. It wasn’t time for certain towns to know about his healing power. But they went off and told many people what the Lord had done. They told so many that Jesus was no longer able to enter towns openly. They got ahead of God’s plan. Heroic patience means not getting ahead of God’s plan.
God gave us the Blessed Virgin Mary as a model of all virtues, but more especially as an example of patience.
Think of the patience and trust in Divine Providence that Mary must have had when she was awakened by Joseph in the middle of the night and told that their family would have to make a quick, nocturnal escape from Herod's murderous soldiers - indeed, that they would have to flee to safety all the way to Egypt, a place where they had (as far as we know) no job, no friends, no relatives, nothing at all! Only patience, founded upon complete trust in Divine Providence could have borne Mary through this sudden flight and prolonged exile.
How does Mary teach us patience?
Our Lady teaches us patience better than anyone! If you consider how much she suffered, you will find that she suffered more than anyone ever, except her divine Son; and this “except” is a qualified one, since her suffering was completely through her identification with him in his earthly life and passion.
You see, the sufferings of sinners are borne on account of their own sins, and so in all justice there is a limit. No mere sinner bears the sins of the world; he bears only his own and only a small portion even of those, or a part of the suffering due the sins of someone he is close to in justice and charity. Our Lady, however, was, by God’s grace, not a sinner, and so all her suffering was not for herself but entirely for others, and she did this in union with Jesus, who principally suffered for sinners.
Of course, Our Lady’s suffering was less than that of her Son, since she knew that her holiness was bought by his sufferings first, but after Jesus, she suffered the most. If we speak of purely human creatures, she had the most patience of all. The word patience comes from the Latin patientia, which means at root simply “suffering” or the endurance of suffering, so Our Lady in her sorrows had the most patience of anyone ever. Well can we go to her for the graces we need to endure our sufferings in patience!
Mary's whole life was a continual exercise of her patience. Compassion alone for the Redeemer's suffering suffices to make her a martyr of patience.
We have seen her sorrows, suffering and patience in the flight into Egypt, the hidden life at Nazareth and during her presence at the crucifixion.
St. Albert says that it was by the merit of her patience that she brought us forth to the life of grace.
If we wish to be children of Mary, we must try to imitate her patience.
"For what can enrich us with the greater merit in this life and greater glory in the next, than the patient enduring of suffering?"
It is also patience that make saints to bear in peace, not only the crosses which come immediately from God and also from men such as persecutions, injuries, calumnies and the rest.
St. Bernard adds, "We can be martyrs without the executioners sword provided only we endure the afflictions of this life with patience and joy."
O what fruit will not every pain borne for Gods sake produce for us in heaven!
When our crosses weigh heavily on us, let us have recourse to Mary who is called by the Church, "The comfortress of the afflicted, and by St. John Damascene, "The Remedy for all sorrows of the heart."
O Blessed Lady, you were innocent and yet suffered with such patience. Help me , so deserving of sufferings, to bear my crosses with patience.
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