This past Sunday we entered into the two-week period traditionally known as Passiontide. As we approach the celebration of the Passion and the climax of Lent, we see in today’s first reading a foretelling of Christ’s Passion in the figure of the bronze serpent. Yet we usually forget how this story about the bronze serpent begins: “With their patience worn out by the journey.”  Doesn’t this often happen to us? We leave Egypt behind, we repent. But the journey to the Promised Land is a hard and long one. Despite our high aspirations at the beginning, we lose our patience. And then, like the Israelites, we mutter to or among ourselves against whomever we consider to be responsible for our situation. Ultimately, whether we realize it or not, we end up grumbling against God, at least implicitly. 

And where does all of our grumbling get us? In today’s first reading, God sends serpents as a punishment. “Serpents” tend to arrive in response to our grumbling as well. The grumbling itself seems to attract them. Whether it’s just a persistent bad mood, a grudge nursed against our neighbor, or the temptation to give up on fasting because “I deserve compensation for this irritating situation,” our grumbling never improves the situation. We may get some pleasure from the complaining itself, but this soon gives way to the serpents slithering into our hearts and tightening their coils. It’s not long before we are in a pretty sorry state. And even if we catch ourselves and realize what we are doing, we may desire to stop but struggle to do so. What are we to do, then?

We can turn for guidance to the tremendous psychological and spiritual insights of Saint Thomas Aquinas. He teaches that patience is related to fortitude (ST II-II q. 136, a. 4). Fortitude in its strict sense is about fear in the face of death, whereas patience is more general and is about enduring any suffering without being conquered by it. The chief act of both is to endure: fortitude in the face of death and patience in the face of any evil (ST II-II q. 136, a. 4, ad 1). We will need both on our journey—patience for the daily trials and fortitude for the final challenge. We can and should practice these virtues by repeated virtuous actions. And we will grow.  But ultimately we are unable on our own to cultivate the patience and fortitude needed to reach the Promised Land of heaven. Our virtues must be informed by charity, which animates them and orders them to the goal of heaven (ST II-II q. 23, a. 8). And there is only one source for that charity: the Lord Jesus Christ.

Like the Israelites, we are to look upon the One who has been lifted up so that we will be healed. We who are plagued by impatience are to look on the truly Patient One as he undergoes his Passion. Indeed, “patience” and “passion” derive from the same Latin root meaning to suffer or to undergo change from without. Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel that when he is lifted up on the cross then we “will realize that I AM.” We look upon the God who was invulnerable to suffering yet became man in order to become capable of patiently enduring the cross. And in gazing upon him, we ourselves are changed. We realize the depth of his love and that he has not only given us an example that we might follow but, through the outpouring of his grace, he has also given us the ability to follow that example in union with him.

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Photo by Bowsk (CC BY 4.0). Edited. The photographer in no way intends to endorse Dominicana.