Patience and Hope

The only way to grow in a virtue—a godly habit of the soul—is to exercise it. Love and faith are just theoretical ideas till they get used and tested, and in the testing (if we don’t abandon them!), they grow. Just like muscles which get bigger through strenuous use, the good habits of the soul need to be used to increase.
 
Each season of the Church calendar offers an opportunity to “work out” certain spiritual virtues. Joy and thanksgiving, for example, get exercised during Christmas and Easter, and contrition gets exercised in Lent. Some virtues, like faith, hope, and love, are trained in every season. The seasons of the Church calendar are like different athletic activities, which train different spiritual muscles, yet certain spiritual muscles are exercised in every season. Advent is a training ground for patience and hope—this season is particularly well-suited for the exercise of them.
 
Patience is the posture of soul that is willing to suffer in expectation of what is to come. The word patience means “suffering and endurance” at its root. When we lack something, if we wait for it without quieting our heart’s longing by grasping at something else, we are training our muscles of patience. The whole focus of Advent is geared towards this: We need the arrival of Christ, and Advent offers a moment to wait without filling that void with something else. That waiting involves suffering, because it involves living (for a season) with unfulfilled longings. This is patience!
 
Patience without hope is incomplete, though. A person can wait in despondency; we can suffer without the belief that we will ever be fulfilled. In Advent, because we know the certainty of Christmas, we can learn to suffer in hope. The certainty of Christmas reminds us of the certainty of Christ’s return, which means that our patience is bound together with hope. Biblical hope is not empty—it is a sure thing, the awareness that God will arrive and that in that arrival, wounds will be healed and life will abound.
 
Advent offers a moment to grow in patience and hope, but in order to do so, we must keep the eyes of our heart fixed on the surety of Christ’s return (and thus grow in hope) and be willing to wait without filling ourselves with other things (and thus grow in patience). Both patience and hope are essential to Christian discipleship, because they are both part of the character of Christ. When we say “yes” to the training, we can expect that the Spirit will cause the growth.
 
In Christ,
 
Steven+