Patience is usually understood as the ability to wait while remaining calm. Family life is filled with numerous occasions to display or develop this skill. Children learn patience by fulfilling their parents' expectations (which are legitimate, but now always understood by them), or during the moments of fatigue and tension their parents can go through. And how about the impaired physical and cognitive capacities of the elderly? Everyone in the family must learn patience… patiently!

Tradition attributes this quality to God. God is slow to anger, rich in grace and faithfulness (Ex 34:6). Our pope Francis highlights that being patient does not mean allowing disrespect and mistreatment. To him, impatience stems from the perfection we expect of others. Being patient sometimes means to recognize the fact that this other person has the right to live next to me just the way he is, even if he cannot give me all I hoped for.

Patience is a divine quality we can pray for, and try to display in our daily lives. For every family member, patience entails a certain dose of compassion to accept others the way they are, while inviting each one of us to change what can be changed.

(Source: https://saintjoseph.ch/blog/post/lamour-prend-patience)

Lectio Divina: 1 Co 13: 4-7

Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, love is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Prayer:

O St. Joseph,

Model of patience,

Clothe us with your wisdom so that we may constantly listen to God,

May the echo we wish to sound

Be always faithful to His Word.

Practical action:

Today, in my family, with my wife and my children, I will look for an occasion to display patience, by really listening to my relatives, and by loving them the way they are (I can even let them know).