How impatient are you?

Fr. Pedro Arrupe, former Jesuit superior, after several visits to basic communities in South America, was asked what he thought was missing from western Christianity?  His reply struck a chord in my prayer this week.  We Christians are not impatient enough!  What!?  I thought patience was a virtue - something to be striven after.  If you were looking at patience as a kind of social glue that keeps people polite and respectful at supermarkets and in public places and on the highways, you’d be right.  “Christians are not impatient enough.” Hmm.  Or perhaps it is better and truer to say that we Christians get impatient about the wrong things.   Shopping lines.  Trying to find the right gift at the right price.  Traffic construction.  A roommate that leaves their wet towel from the shower in the middle of the room.  We’ve learned to put up with these things so well that we have kind of lost something crucial.  On a faith level, we’ve lived so long with the expectation of Jesus’ second coming that never seems to appear that we have lost the fire, the zeal, the passion that burned in the heart of the one we are professing to follow.
  
I had a conversation this week with a mother who was furious that the government was asking their son to do a THIRD tour in Iraq, in harms way, with a different branch of the military that he signed up for, because field medics are in such high need and demand.  Obviously, a lot of that anger was fueled by her concern for her son.  But there was another level to it as well – she was angry that as a world, we have not found a way to end conflicts without resorting to power and killing and brute force.  And I thought to myself – ah, here at last is at least one woman who is impatient for the right reasons, one woman who heard the call to turn swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks and to not study for war anymore.

We Christians are not impatient enough.  That is not a slam upon our character, but a call to action.  It is what we heard from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans: “You know the time, NOW IS THE HOUR to wake from your sleep.  Now is the time to throw off the works of darkness” – to get impatient about the things that God gets impatient about.  Now is the time for us to get impatient with that habit of sin that we’ve accommodated ourselves to.  When you find yourself thinking: “So what that I look at some things on the internet I shouldn’t – at least I am not a thief or a murderer,” then you’re not impatient enough.  When I don’t spend the extra time to sort through my trash for the recyclable cans and paper and figure – I’m just one person, it’s a small carbon footprint, it won’t affect greenhouse gas emissions that much – I’m not impatient enough.  When I let the sun set on my anger and don’t take the time to be reconciled with my friend or spouse or parent or child – then I’m not impatient enough. 
  
As we begin this season of advent, I invite you to look at your “Impatience Scale” - not in the whole ‘polite social behavior realm’ – but in the gospel imperative, prophetic turning your swords into plowshares realm.  And then ask that simple gospel question:  Am I impatient enough to start working for the coming that Jesus promised?  Am I impatient enough for God these days?