Pope Leo is teaching the church the virtue of patience

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(RNS) —  Anyone who reads my columns knows I am not a patient person. If I see a problem, I want it fixed now.

For global warming, we must switch to green energy. Government deficits? Increase taxes on the rich. A bad translation of the liturgy? Use the 1998 translation by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy. A shortage of priests? Allow married men to be ordained.

These problems and their solutions are so clear to me that I can’t understand why things can’t change immediately.

God, and his servant Pope Leo XIV, on the other hand, are exemplars of patience. Jesus taught us about the patience of God in the Parable of the Weeds Among the Wheat (Mt. 13: 24-30).

According to the parable, a man sowed good seed, but an enemy came at night and sowed weeds. When both grow in his field, his workers want to pull up the weeds as soon as they appear.

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“No,” says the householder, “if you pull up the weeds, you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest.” At…