Meditations

PATIENT ACCEPTANCE In your patience possess ye your souls. Luke 21.19 The soul deserts its very nature when it becomes impatient. When it submits without complaint, it takes possession of itself in peace, and comes into possession of God. To become impatient is to want what we do not have, and not to want what we do have. In so doing, the soul is handed over to its passions, and neither reasoning nor faith can hold it back, so troubled is it. Such weakness! Such swerving away from the right path! As long as we desire the soul's sickness that brings us suffering, to us it is not sickness. Why would we make our sickness a reality by ceasing to desire it? Inner peace exists not in the flesh, but in the will. We can hold on to peace in the midst of the most violent suffering, as long as the will remains firm and submissive to God, despite its abhorrence of the situation. Peace on this earth consists in accepting the things that are contrary to our desires, not in being exempted from suffering them, nor in being delivered from all temptations.