Patience and Leniency: The Way of Hope

There is an oriental proverb which says, “The taller the bamboo, the lower it bends.” It means that the more noble, secure, and powerful a person is the more flexible and humble he is. A short bamboo is not flexible. It easily breaks when you bend it. The tall bamboo, however, bends with the wind that blows. It never breaks. It is confident of its strength and power. That is why it is capable of bending very low.

The inspired author of the Book of Wisdom practically says the same thing about God. God is so great and noble that he is able to be lenient and merciful to all: “...Your might is the source of justice, your mastery over all things makes you lenient to all. ...But though you are master of might, you judge with clemency, and with such leniency you govern us; for power wherever you will, attends you. And you taught your people by these deeds, that those who are just must be kind. And you gave your sons ground for hope.”

Because God is God he can look at everything from every side. His vision is unlimited. And he can also read the minds and hearts of all. Because of this he is slow to anger and rich in mercy. He even allows people time to repent. The way of hope is the same thing. It does not resort to the quick fix. A man of hope is not interested in immediate results. He sees great wisdom in time and the ability to patiently wait. And to wait is never easy. To wait and hope often strikes others as passive or downright irresponsible. But to have lasting results sometimes we have to do things step by step, brick by brick, one day at a time.

The scientist, for example, who discovers new life forms is never troubled (but he should be) by ethical issues in what is being done. He wants to apply his discovery right away to find cures to diseases without caring about moral implications. People with very good intentions but rush to condemn others may not be imitating God who relents in punishment. God’s ways are obviously not man’s ways. And man’s hope lies in this infinite difference.

Patient waiting is an important ingredient in the forgiving process that follows a three-step formula. One cannot rush through them. When one forgives, he must also forget. Otherwise the wrong-doing or offense remains unpardoned. The formula I learned late in life in the matter of forgiving is detailed as follows:

The first step is prayer. Jesus taught us this first step when he prayed for his persecutors: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” The first Christian martyr, St. Stephen who was stoned to death, also prayed for forgiveness. Prayer can do wonders. It is the simplest defense of the offended party. God listens to the cry of the afflicted, and this prayer that imitates the prayer of His Son is most pleasing to Him.

The second step is to interpret the motive of the offender by entering into his or her mind. We give excuses. We assign a kinder meaning in the act that offended us. We look at the act in a larger picture. By giving a new meaning to deeds and words, we eventually begin to look at them as no longer offensive but defensive – even a cry for help. We begin first to pity, then to be compassionate with the erring.

And the third and last step is to love the offender in a magnanimous way, to look at him as a benefactor, instrumental in making us holy. The murderer of Maria Goretti, the executioners of Maximillian Kolbe – have one thing in common with the executioners of Jesus on the Cross – they were instrumental in the salvation of mankind. We begin to “play” God when we love the sinner, even the unrepentant one. God lets his sun rise on both the good and the bad alike. God is generous and we as his children should imitate him. We should be compassionate even as our Father is compassionate.

In forgiving ourselves we also go through the same steps. The first is that we should pray that God forgive us, especially because we really don’t know what we are doing. We have been deceived by the world, the flesh and the devil. The father of lies has played tricks on us. We become obsessive. We lose our sense of proportion. We fail to see the goodness of God in our lives.

The second step in self-forgiving is to give a new interpretation to our own actions, not to excuse, but to deepen our own condition of inadequacy and need for love. We often look for love in the wrong places and relationships. We are poor in our judgments. We have blind spots and even if we are intellectually smart we make stupid mistakes, due to our wounded human nature.

And the third and last step is to love Jesus in us, the Jesus that is victimized, the Jesus that is misunderstood, and the Jesus who loves and wants to be loved. I should love Jesus in me and in doing so I love the wounded Jesus and therefore the wounded humanity. I look at life from the point of view of eternity. My eternal destiny depends on my loving Jesus in me and in others.

I learned this important lesson in patience and forgiving from St. John the beloved disciple. He is a good example of a person who mellowed in his old age. As a young man he was so impulsive and easily irritated, that Jesus called him a “son of thunder.” But many years later, in one of his letters he wrote, “God is love, and he who loves has passed from death to life.”

Young people are by nature aggressive. They are more sensitive to injustice, to the lack of fairness. They want to right all wrongs immediately. But when they reach old age, when they have learned that many injustices in fact are never fully remedied in this life, they become less physically aggressive. The elderly, especially those who are spiritually adventurous, can dream dreams more grandiosely than the young. Many of them miraculously become tolerant of the imperfections of others, which in previous age they spent so much energy to correct. For this reason doting grandparents seem to spoil their grandchildren to the irritation of their “disciplinarian” sons who now themselves are fathers. This is because they discover a new capacity to love, a more mature but childlike capacity to see things in a larger canvas, the capacity to see other values which can only be perceived and appreciated when one approaches the end of one’s life journey.

When we start forgiving, when we start excusing people for their mistakes, and when we give a kinder interpretation to their actions, we actually begin to love in a different and a deeper way. We pass from death to life, and we truly rise from our graves. It’s actually love that enables and urges us to live.

It is pitiful to see an old man unable to forgive, who still plots revenge in his heart. I know of one who died fighting a court battle to regain a parcel of land he had lost through a legal technicality. I know of another who suffered a fatal stroke while arguing heatedly with a person who could not pay him back his loan. As people advance in age, they should entrust everything to God. Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans says: “It is written, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord’...Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil by good.”

One begins to truly live when one begins to love with a childlike trust, a virtue that takes decades to develop. Love is love when it is patient, for the first quality of love is patience. The encounter of Nicodemus with Jesus as narrated in the Fourth Gospel is most telling. Christ tells this old teacher of the law that unless he is born again he will never enter eternal life. New life comes not by entering into our mothers’ womb again, but by receiving the spirit of God. The prophet Ezekiel said the same thing: “I will pour my spirit upon you.” Yes, it is the Spirit of God that gives us life, which makes us love. And when we receive his spirit, we receive new powers including the power to forgive the unforgivable. To be patient and lenient with the erring, the unreasonable, even with the unforgiving, is the way of hope, the greatest lesson of old age.