Gentleness and Patience

Being a priest and being able to help others is both a rewarding and challenging ministry. At times, we have to be firm in teaching and defending the faith; other times, we must be gentle and encouraging for people who are struggling. At times, we are accused of being too rigid when we have to be genuine to the teachings of the Church; other times, we are accused of being too lenient toward those who have been labeled as undeserving, “not Catholic enough,” or labeled as outcasts by others. There is no perfect, general, blanketed answer to the priestly ministry because it requires true discernment and understanding of the situation and people involved. Each encounter, relationship, and challenge presents itself as a way to integrate both the genuineness and fidelity to the Church‘s teachings while trying to meet people where they are to help them accept, embrace, and grow through the grace of God in the present struggles.

As a matter of fact, St. Ignatius of Loyola stated this balance of BOTH a firm AND gentle approach in his first two rules of discernment and throughout his guidelines and points on the Spiritual Exercises as well. It is up, therefore, to the spiritual counselor and guide to discern and see the different graces of God at work and the hindrances that might be thrown in one’s life to support, admonish, encourage, as well exhort the person to seek, love, and persevere in following His will in the present moment.

Many times in life, we will get confused about which voice is of God and his holy ones, of the evil ones, or of ourselves. That is why it is important to learn to first and continually listen to His voice through a consistent, disciplined, and daily life of prayers. And, when it gets hard and challenging, to know when to seek out spiritual guidance, counseling, or direction from people who are wiser and more grounded than us to acknowledge, see, listen, receive, and respond accordingly.

In the beginning stages of our spiritual journey, the voice of God and His holy ones will sting our conscience to invite us to a personal and more profound change from our present state of life. Their love for us will initially seem off-putting and unattractive because we want to continue our own ways. In contrast, the evil ones constantly bombard us with sweet talks, temptations, and pleasures to keep us from listening, pursuing, and desiring the truth that will set us free. It is ultimately up to us to truly desire and will to seek the change that is necessary, heartfelt, and grace-filled instead of simply chasing after apparent, temporary, and never-fulfilling changes of earthly, humanistic, and hedonistic goods. However, once we have made the commitment to let go of our lifestyle and change for the better, the initial attitudes begin to take a 180-degree turn.

Once we desire to follow God and do what is right, the evil spirits will attack us, filling us with lies, accusations, and dismissiveness. They will tell us that we are no good, have sinned too much, are not worthy of being loved by God, and can never achieve anything positive from this futile effort. They can sometimes create dramatic and challenging obstacles by using other people, circumstances, and situations in our lives to impede, deter, and make us lose heart. Nonetheless, if we listen deep from within, God and His holy ones will encourage, support, and lift us up with gentle spiritual strength, grace, tenacity, and perseverance.

Therefore, for those of us who have overcome our past failures, shame, guilt, or sins, it is important to remember to be compassionate and patient with those who are still struggling. Perhaps it is best to remember what happened to us when we tried our best to seek God and change our lives in the past, especially the negativities, discouragement, and hurts we had to face to pursue personal change for the better. Not everyone is like us, not everyone is strong, not everyone can be righteous and just, not everyone can be perfect, and not everyone wears wounds, hurts, and sufferings that we can see with our mere eyes and immediate judgments. If we are too stuck in our own self-righteousness, pointing out the apparent wrongs and imperfections of others who are still struggling, we really have nothing better to do but hide our own personal ineffectiveness and brokenness.

If we take the time to really sit down to pray about how long it actually took us to overcome our past hurt, dependency, addiction, struggle, pain, or suffering, we will become more compassionate to those who are going through them now. Also, if we really take the time to see where we are now, recovering and still struggling to choose to do what is right each and every day, we will be able to relate, empathize, and be patient with those who are still struggling more than we do at this moment. It is sad to say that we have become more politically correct and socially sensitive but lack personal and loving sensitivity to those who are around us. We can say and do all the right things, pointing fingers and attacking others or vocally defending and stating our views, but at the end of the day, we still remain indifferent, angry, frustrated, or simply behind the screen to actually give care for others.

This is hard to understand, accept, and embrace in our lives, but it is important to remind ourselves that we cannot save others if they are unwilling to be saved! Even with our best intentions, we cannot change others unless they will be changed. We can only encourage and support, hopefully not just with empty, self-righteous, and justifying words and gestures but genuine and humble actions and ways of life. We speak louder and more effectively when our lives go hand in hand with our faith to point others to God, not just our self-righteousness. No matter how hard we try, we can never change others if they are not ready. And, at times, we might push them away if we are too full of ourselves and insensitive to their brokenness. Sometimes, people are not ready to change, no matter how hard we might want them to be… and we must be humble enough to accept it! We can only change ourselves and pray for those who are not ready, are on the fence, slowly accepting, or struggling to seek the grace-filled transformation that is deep from within.

The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus reminds us that His heart was pierced for our sins! He knew that we would fail and hurt Him, but He never chose not to love us. He embraced rejection, abandonment, betrayal, dismissal, especially all the accompanying pains and sufferings because He loved us with everything that He got, with every fiber of His being, with every insult He endured, with every pain inflicted upon Him, and with every hard breath that He took as He was hung on the Cross. He loves us even when we are unlovable and cannot love Him or ourselves. In the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we learn what it means to love until it hurts, especially when the decision to love is challenging, hard, not beneficial, incentivized, or when we have been hurt, betrayed, abandoned, ignored, or forgotten by those who we are called to love. He taught us through His very own life examples and the numerous lives and teachings of the saints to seek, desire, do, and embrace all things out of and for greater love.

It is difficult to love, especially those who have hurt us. Nonetheless, we were not commanded to love those who are our friends or whom we like, but to love and pray for those who might seem to be our enemies in persecuting, hurting, harming, or perhaps at times have ill will against us. But this is what it means to love even when it hurts! That is why it is so hard to be Christians: we are called to be both loving of our neighbors and firm in defending our faith, strong and persevering in living the truth while compassionate and merciful to those who are hard to love at times. In Christ, we have been taught how to truly love and will the good of others in both words and actions, life and deeds. Therefore, at times, when we do not get what we want, are challenged to our limits, question why things happened differently than what we would have liked, or find ourselves discouraged at why our goodwill is being rejected, ignored, and dismissed by others, we are called to imitate and conform our very own hearts to His Sacred Heart. Perhaps we are hurt and do not always get what we want because our hearts are given the opportunity to be crowned with thorns and pierced by love. In embracing all the trials and struggles, resistances and falling outs, perhaps they remind us that our hearts are still tender to feel the pains and sufferings and not yet hardened by self-righteousness, hypocrisy, cynicism, resentment, frustration, anger, envy, or jealousy. Perhaps when things get hard, we are reminded that we were given opportunities to conform to His tender, loving, pierced, merciful, and compassionate Heart that loves us even when we do not love Him or ourselves.

In a day and age where it has become easy to be vocal and draw attention to ourselves with whatever political agenda we follow, we need to seek the truth and change our lives in conformity to God‘s loving will. It is hard, for change is not easy! It will be challenging because whatever is real and personal requires a sacrificial letting go to embrace new possibilities. It will be discouraging at times, too, because other people will doubt, question, or turn against us because of their own insecurities, self-righteousness, hurts, pains, and brokenness. Remember that it is very easy to pick and blame others, be frustrated at their failures or wrongdoings according to our standards, or resentful because they seem to have what we do not possess! Nonetheless, if we do those things, have we really changed our lives for the better, or do we only try to numb, ignore, and suppress our conscience, calling out for real, genuine, and personal change? It is indeed hard to be transparent, held accountable, humble, and tenacious in fighting off the manipulations, lies, and noisiness of this world and evil spirits that want to keep us from being focused on the truth.

So, what can we do in our everyday life to be firm and gentle? Perhaps we have to look at ourselves first to pray, reflect, and discern what is right and proper for us — not concerning others, but with ourselves first. We can all find what we are comfortable, blessed, and gifted with the grace of God to teach, embrace, and give witness to the faith in unpretentious ways. We try not to impose or justify ourselves as being better, more righteous, and holier than others but as transparent, faithful, humble, genuine, and authentic disciples who are still on the way, seeking holiness and working on reaching a better understanding of His will for us. We can only be true and faithful to what God and the Church have taught us, handing on the faith given to us! Invite those still struggling to find help and encourage them to seek God‘s will for them, too. We might not be able to help everyone, but we can be both firm and gentle, humble and patient, genuine and authentic, encouraging and accountable.

The Lord Jesus Christ always remained faithful to who He was when living with us. He was faithful in teaching the right and calling out wrong with love, and some people dismissed His teaching and walked away from Him. He had compassion for those who struggled and humbled those who were arrogant and self-righteous. He lifted up those bowed down by the shame and guilt cast by others and turned around the arrogance of those who thought much about themselves. Our Lord was both firm and gentle, compassionate and patient with those who needed Him, and He put those full of themselves back into their places. Therefore, let us learn from Him to stand firm and give witness to the never-changing truth through our very own lives of humble, genuine, and trusting discipleship while being gentle, compassionate, and merciful to those who are struggling and in need of His grace (as we do, too).