We’ve got lots of flowers up here, I feel like I’m in a florist shop. We had a beautiful wedding last night and a funeral this morning. We’re decorating for Christmas after the mass tomorrow. It’s going to be very beautiful. Christmas is almost here, and what virtue do you need the most this time of year? Hey, that rhymes. I’m hearing a lot of confessions, and every other confession says patience. "Father, I have no patience. I need patience." The fact that you are confessing that indicates that you realize that patience is a virtue, patience is something we need to work on. There is a lot of stress this time of year, a lot of last minute shopping and cooking, and details of hospitality and worries about the families coming together. The kids are home from college and that’s great for the first day and a half and then something happens. I personally think it's all the sugar. Please don’t bring any more cookies to the office, please. There are always difficult relatives. Well, I don’t know about your family. You don’t have any difficult relatives, do you? No, that’s what I thought. Some of them are probably here tonight, look straight ahead. We have one relative, this guy just about ruined every Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter for 20 years. I drive up to with my mom, and I say, "Oh, here we go again." One Christmas I asked midway through the meal, "Did he insult you yet?" She said, "Yeah, He got me at the door on the way in." It takes a lot of patience to deal with people and yourself when you are tired. So Christmas requires patience, but really faith requires patience. I am really trying to link those things together. Faith, trust, and patience. I really think that the argument can be made that if you have and you do, then you’ll have patience.

The Jewish people, the Hebrew people before them, had patience. We hear the Davidic Covenant described in the first reading tonight and also in the Gospel. That was the covenant made with David. God made a covenant with David that he would call from his lineage a messiah who would lead his people forever in peace. But the promise was fulfilled, but it took a thousand years. David reigned in about the year 1000. When his son Solomon died in 922, the kingdom was destroyed because of a succession of corrupt kings. And in 722 the northern ten tribes fell captive to the Assyrians. What were the people thinking? Where is this Messiah? In 587 Judah fell, Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. Where was the messiah? Then the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Romans all conquered the Jews, and where was their messiah? But yet, they didn’t give up hope. When John the Baptist came announcing that the messiah was about to come, they listened to him, they accepted him, and they were ready for him. They thought it was John. Certainly this little Jewish girl, Miriam the exalted one, we call her Mary, she was ready. She trusted. We heard a great story of trust tonight. How many times have you heard the Gospel from Luke? You love it every time you hear it. The people probably after about 1000 years we could expect, would have thought that God had forgot his promise, or maybe the God of Israel was no God at all. But they didn’t, they had patience. There was a hunger for the messiah.

We need to have that same patience in our daily lives. I really believe, perhaps more than ever, in this year, 2002, I mean compared to past centuries, we’re more impatient. We should be more patient. Look at some of the things we have today that we didn’t have many years ago, washing machines and dryers. I remember my mom doing the wash in the bathtub on one of those boards, you know scrub boards with soap, big old bars of soap. The kids are looking at me like, what? I mean it took so long to do basic chores. If you had told those old people that we’ll have washers and dryers and dishwashers and all those things, all those conveniences, they’d say, "Oh, you’re going to have plenty of time to relax." Right? It makes sense. These are time saving devices. What ever happened to the typewriter? Remember those? Kids don’t. Typewriters. Now we have word processors. I did a search, I "googled" up the word patience. Now what means is that in the internet there are these things called search engines. Most of you know this. I know less about it than perhaps everyone here. But search engines, you put a word or words, and it goes out in the whole internet, the whole world, and it answers, it gives you information. So I googled up the word patience, and I got 2,740,000 hits and it took, listen to this, it took .12 seconds to get that information. Isn’t that amazing. If you had every book in the world in your house, it wouldn’t do you any good. You couldn’t find what you were looking for. You just google up stuff and there it is. If you had told students years ago that this would make everything so much easier and you must have a lot of extra time, but we don’t. Where is the extra time? What happened to it? What have we done with it? We want fast food; we want instant everything, 10-minute oil changes. We’re so impatient.

At the funeral this morning, the mother of the man who died, James Bridges, was 54, his mother is Adulia. She remembers from when she was a little girl, she’s from the northern part of Espanola, and she remembers visiting her relative, I think an uncle, in Abiquiu. They used to go by wagon and it took two days. She said, "Oh Father, it was the greatest time in the world, we’d stop midway at a church on the right of the road." I think I know what she’s talking about. It’s an old mission. It’s decrepit now. She said," We’d stop and we’d cook and we’d build a fire." Two days to get to Abiquiu. Now when you drive to Abiquiu, one’s going," Oh when is this road going to get fixed?" It took them two days, and they loved every minute of it. We’re celebrating Posadas before Christmas. Years ago everyone celebrated Posadas because there was no work to be done in December. Farmers don’t work in December that much, so everyone celebrates Posadas. A simpler time, and I think people had a lot more patience than we do. Patience is a virtue. It can be prayed for, it can be acquired, it can be fortified, it can be increased. It’s possible. As Christians, we should have it naturally as we wait for Christ at Christmas in joyful anticipation. As we wait even for the end of the world for our death in joyful anticipation. Patience shows our trust in God.

Every culture knows this about patience. I love proverbs because proverbs are a distillation of human wisdom. The Dutch say, "An ounce of patience is worth more than a pound of brains." The English say, "He that has no patience has nothing." The Irish say, "Patience cures many an old complaint." Japanese say that, "True patience consists in bearing what is unbearable." Like some relatives. The Jewish say, "With patience, you can even bore through granite." And here’s my favorite, African, Ovambo, "If you do not have patience, you cannot make beer." Thought I was getting mushy on you, didn’t you. The Turkish say, "Patience is the key to joy." Here’s what, I like this one certainly perfect, the Indian say, "Patience is the greatest prayer." Think about that. Next time you’re impatient, just be patient. That’s a prayer. It really is, isn’t it? It’s a prayer that God loves very much.

Now who are the most patient people? The poor and the suffering, you know, you watch elections in third world countries, where they stand in line 10 hours to vote. Would you stand in line 10 hours to vote? Neither would I. I preach it, but I don’t do much of this. People who suffer are patient. People, I have learned, that impress me the most with patience are people who care for the sick, especially loved ones who are caring for their parents or spouses, especially spouses with Alzheimer’s. I have met more saints, I think something happens when someone gets Alzheimer’s, their wife or husband becomes a saint. They are so patient, so loving, and they’ll all tell you they had to learn it, and it’s a hard lesson. Patience comes from suffering, like gold that is tested in fire, patience is developed during hard times. There was a doctor some years ago, I read a story about a woman doctor who almost died, and she said the period of her suffering taught her more about being a good doctor than medical school. She learned to be patient with her patients and patient with herself. She said, "She learned to believe that everything is as it should be right now." If you love God, everything is as it should be right now. She became a better doctor.

I got an email some time back, from a former parishioner, and he wrote, "I wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. As the holidays get near, our tempers seem to be a little shorter. We are trying to make it fun for the kids, but they feel the tension too. We know that one day at a time is sometimes really hard, even harder this time of year. I still continue to pray for guidance and comfort. Sometimes I feel I am slipping away from God’s presence already and I’m still confused as to how to live my faith." I answered back with the prayer, a simple prayer of St. Teresa of Avilla.

And at Christmas we have God, Emmanuel. God is with us, and that’s enough.