"Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. And let your perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing" (James 1:2-4). All of us are trying to be perfect, and to become perfect, we need to practice patience in our life. "The virtue of patience is the one which most assures us of perfection," writes St. Francis de Sales in his classic work Introduction to the Devout life. I believe that patience is very essential to discipleship to which all of us are being called. Patience is the virtue center to Christian living. It is very essential for success and happiness in life. But at the same time, it is this virtue which escapes most people. When we are very busy and have to go through stress -- work, family, financial and insurance problems, health concerns, etc. -- we tend to become impatient. "Restraining my impatience cost me so much that I was bathed in perspiration," St. Thérèse the Little Flower writes. Patience is a virtue we need to practice if we really want to follow Christ. But how? There are three ways we can practice patience. Patience with God, patience with oneself, and patience with others.
Patience with God is the first step we need to practice. Maybe it is good to ask the question: Am I patient with God? There is a pride in us; the pride our first parents had. It is to make ourselves equal with God, or to think we are a bit  smarter than God. Sometimes we question the way God acts; sometimes we are not happy with the way God created the world. When certain situation arises in our life, when certain crises come into our life, we tend to do what we want and not listen to God. When we take control and push God away from ourselves, we tend to become like our first parents, Adam and Eve. Pride enters into our life. This pride is the root cause of our impatience with God. Be honest: in our prayers, we become impatient with God. The sterility, dryness, and tedium we experience in our prayer life lead us to a discouragement that tempts us to give up our prayers. Prayer is something which God likes us to do, so He teaches us to pray unceasingly. But why does prayer become a most difficult thing, and why is it that we lose our patient in prayer? To have fruitful prayer, patience, perseverance, and persistence are very important. So beware of the powerful temptation that comes when our prayers become frustrating and dry.
As we learn to be patient with God, we need to learn to be patient with His Church, too. We believe that the Lord is alive and active in the Church, so we need to be more patient with Him. Some of us may be impatient with the Church because we feel that she is too slow, too plodding in renewal, too hesitant in keeping up with contemporary challenges, too cautions to take risks. On the other hand, some people tend to think the Church is too quick to embrace new ideas, for abandoning her heritage and Tradition. These are the two positions we find within the Church, and we tend to become impatient. Virtue is always in the middle. So we need to learn to patiently trust God and His Church because the Church is both human and divine.

St. Francis de Sales teaches us about being patient with ourselves: "Be patient with everyone, but above all, with yourself. I mean, do not be disturbed with your imperfections, and always rise up bravely from a fall." When we fail to meet our goals, we tend to retreat to our rooms, or get crabby, or stay in our bed, or help ourselves with drink. Remember the words of St. Paul (...when I am weak, I am strong) because we can realize the power of Christ within us.
We sometimes become impatient with ourselves due to our sins, especially sins of the flesh. At other times, we are eager to become immediate Messiahs, to save the world and the Church in a sense of urgency. If we approach others with this attitude and bind on them everything we think is best for them, we will grow impatient with people who do not blindly accept our ready answers. It is humility that will come to our aid to help our impatience with others. Humility helps us to accept those people who are slow to understand our ready answers. Remember the prayer of Pope John XXXIII to Jesus Christ when he found the Church was going through a crisis in every aspect of life: "It is your Church, Jesus. I am going to sleep!" A sense of humor can also help us to become patient with others.
The prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr may help us to become more patient with God, with ourselves, and with others: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."