The Virtue of Patience

Excerpt from "10 Things Pope Benedict XVI Wants You to Know":


"Probably without being conscious of it, Pope Benedict XVI is teaching the world something through his own behavior.  He is exceedingly humble and gentle, which stands in stark contrast to the bluster and braggadocio often associated with global titans in the worlds of politics, finance, and culture.  He is living proof that one does not have to be an exhibitionist to lead and to inspire.

Perhaps more important, he's teaching a microwave world that expects instant results to slow down a bit, to catch its breath, and to look before it leaps.  Upon Benedict's election, there were fevered expectations of swift and dramatic action in many quarters.  Some expected a root-and-branch reform of the Roman Curia, the Catholic Church's central organ of government.  Others anticipated a sweeping crackdown on dissident theologians and liberal activists within the Church.  To this day, many pundits and commentators are still waiting for the "real" Benedict to emerge from beneath his patient, gentle facade; what they don't seem to appreciate is that what they regard as a facade is, in fact, the real pope.

Benedict is a man of deep faith, which means he realized that, ultimately, the vicissitudes of the Church and of the world are in God's hands, not his.  There's a serenity about him, a lack of what the Germans call angst, rooted in his belief that the final act of the story in which all of us are involved has already been written, and it ends well. Thus he does not feel the need to lurch from one initiative to the next or to resolve all the Church's problems in a single bound.  He understands better than most the complexities of those problems, both intellectually and pastorally, and he also grasps the importance of thinking carefully before taking steps that may have unforeseen consequences.

In an impatient world, Benedict XVI is a very patient man.  To paraphrase Saint Augustine, occasionally his very lack of deeds is an important "word" for the harried women and men of his time".