Be patient!

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle C
Gospel: Lk. 18; 1-8

This may seem a paradox, but the more we're making new inventions to make life easier, the more life is getting complicated. Compare the concerns of people of yesteryears with our time today. Despite the advancements in technology, we never seem to be happy.

Probably we forget that the secret to enjoyment is not in the end result, but in the act of doing it. This is the joy of every painter, that in the act of brushing and combining colors, truth and beauty would slowly come out.

Same is true with life, that the process may just be as important as the end result.

We cannot short-circuit the way we bring up our children. They and us will have to experience the pains of growth and the art of bringing them up and our presence in their journey through life.

The secret to life is not in making things easier (buying a car, having high-tech gadgets at home), but in making sense of life and the time given to us.

We need patience to change ourselves, to forgive ourselves, and to help ourselves grow through the painful things that happen in our lives. We need patience in others too who are undergoing the same process as we are going through.

We need patience to know God, to understand his ways, and make our love for Him perfect while we undergo the trials of daily life. And know that from the very start, it is God who has been patient with us all along.

Finally, we need to grow patiently as a Church and as a people. When sin corrupts people, a whole generation is affected. We can work on promoting virtues for the next generation by living them out. We need to promote a community that is oriented to living out God's will toward genuine social transformation.