Holy patience! my grandmother would say—and she'd invoke it precisely when she felt ready to lose hers, when every other argument had run out and a shout or a smack seemed unavoidable. But why holy? Because it works miracles like the saints, or because it makes holy those who practice it with toil and constancy? I ask myself now, having just read Fr. Petitclerc's reflections, so true and vital.
And I don't know why, when Mariangela asked me to recall a moment when practicing this virtue had brought unexpected results as a teacher or as a friend to disabled young people, I thought first of how little I had actually exercised it—or how much more I should have used. And second, I thought of the quiet, steady, often overlooked patience that they practice instead: our disabled friends.
I don't mean to speak here of the daily struggle for young people with mental and physical disabilities—of growing up and learning everything in those first years and through elementary school, because that story would be too vast and complex. Instead, I mean simpler things. Experiences that many of them face with a smile every day. Results they reach through effort and constancy, never losing faith or patience, finding joy in their work and bringing happiness to those who work alongside them. Anyone who has watched these young people with various disabilities learn—to take a measurement on a wooden board, for instance, to hammer nails, to use pliers and screwdrivers, to color small spaces and glue strips of fabric with precision to complete a planned object—understands at once what I mean. And anyone who has watched a young woman affected by mild or severe spasticity work at knitting, or pass needle and thread through the open weave of fabric to create a multicolored embroidery, knows how much holy, wonderful patience that young woman needs.
And how much patience these saints of patience must show toward us—toward us friends and teachers—toward our clumsiness, our moods and our impatience, our asking for too much too quickly, our confused suggestions, our misplaced scolding. How much patience from them to keep respecting us and loving us.
Of course we must be patient too, and often we are, even excessively so. And sometimes we are rewarded with lovely surprises.
That teacher who—as she told me—kept one child in her classroom drawing circles, nothing but circles, for an entire year, never becoming discouraged but supporting him in every way until, only in the next year, a small tail appeared beside one circle, then a little arm, and all those circles slowly transformed into vowels and consonants. That teacher won through patience, yes—but also through intuition and affection.
I know a principal who, to place a difficult former student of hers, wrote to two hundred different integrated agricultural cooperatives and visited them until she found the right one in every way for her young man. She followed his placement, witnessed his first failure, and with holy patience sought another situation that finally proved to be the right one. And even now she doesn't let go of her worker, always a bit resistant: she invites him regularly to lunch to set him straight or listen to his complaints, and she doesn't forget to press his employers! Another victory for patience? Yes—but also such grit, and such faith in people's goodwill!
One last small story. In the workshop L'Alveare, when Elisabetta decided to direct the musical "Masks in the Square," she took on difficult work. All of us—young people and adults—fell far short of the task ahead. Choreographed dances, so many stage movements, dialogue, songs, costumes without end. With passion and tenacity, using inventiveness, good taste, imagination and precious friendships, time and the skill of our friends, she completed her task and achieved a small triumph for all of L'Alveare and for each of the young people, committed to the best of their ability and nature, all made beautiful and elegant by the costumes. Was it patience? Yes, it took great underlying patience, strengthened by the right impatience toward things that weren't working or could have gone better. It was true patience, in her who was not patient by nature, inspired and sustained by the affection she felt for Augusto, Cabiria, Carlo, Maria, Alvaro, Gianni, Annunziata, Giacomo, and all of us who will never forget her.
Maria Teresa Mazzarotto, 2007