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Am I patient and persevering? How can patience and perseverance transform my life?

Patience is what drives us to persevere, perseverance leads us to hope, and hope guides us to happiness, because after hope comes God’s time. This is how we can realise how much we are capable of transforming our lives! We all need to understand that our destiny is not written in advance - that does not exist! You are the architects of your own destiny.

So we must work at improving our patience, I said a little about this at the seminar. Patience is waiting, knowing how to wait for God’s time. What is God, and what is God’s time? God, as you know, is omnipresent, here, there and everywhere, but there’s also something else… God’s time is the time of perfection. He does not like things that are in disorder. He likes order in all things. You only have to look at the mountains when you travel across your country – we can see beauty, but it’s not beauty that Man has created, it’s the beauty that God has given you, because He is the one who has created all that. And it’s the perfection of the hillsides, one behind the other – if we’d asked an architect to design that, I wonder how he could have even begun the job! It’s not just a few kilometres, but the whole of your immense country which is bathed in His Creation.

God’s time is the time of perfection for each and every one of you. Do you think that God doesn’t know who you are? You sometimes feel very isolated, you have the feeling that no-one’s listening to you any more, you have  the impression that you’re separated from others, and especially from Him. So that shows that you have not understood who God is, and you have not understood who you are. Ask the father of any family – he may have two, three, four, five children or more – could this father, with all his faults, forget one of his children? No, he knows exactly how many children he has.

Well, just think for a moment, God is not a human being, His love is infinite and He is unique for everyone of you. He cannot leave you isolated because He is within you. If you are not aware of that, I don’t think you can understand what Invitation to Life is! And what are you doing in this association, if you forget the essential? The essential part is truly knowing that you are a unique child from God’s point of view. You are more than 6 billion here on earth, and He knows exactly what you’re doing, every second. Of course, this is an understanding that is out of the reach of human beings because we want to understand everything, know everything, touch everything. That’s why Christ said - “Blessed are the gentle, for they shall see God.” What does that mean? Gentleness is humility. 

When we are in a state of humility, we don’t want to hold others back, we can’t feel superior to others, so we’re gentle because our heart is full of light. You see God because when you meet someone, when you harmonise someone, when a doctor – and there are many of you here today – is face to face with a patient, that patient is not just a  number, a grain of sand, it’s God that you have in your hands … God sends them to you, so if you look with new eyes, you will understand immediately that your mission will be beautiful and grand - that’s the meeting with God. This is not just imagination or a form of gymnastics, definitely not! Meeting God happens in a state of simplicity. It’s in me and the other – that means that when we’re facing Him and we try to discover ourselves, it’s through prayer that we can do so. If we pray in silence, closing our eyes, as Christ invited us to do, then we are with Him and we understand His presence because we can feel it.

But be persevering, be patient. Patience is what drives us to persevere, perseverance leads us to hope, and hope guides us to happiness, because after hope comes God’s time. This is how we can realise how much we are capable of transforming our lives! We all need to understand that our destiny is not written in advance, that does not exist! You are the architects of your own destiny. It’s in today’s actions and thoughts, at this very instant, that you will create and generate your future. If you are sad, bitter and seeking revenge, you can’t expect to find happiness tomorrow. So let’s change the way we think and live differently, let’s live something else.

 I think that we’ve shared a long journey, for some of us, anyway, more than twenty years, more than twenty-four years – as for the others in France – and don’t let’s talk about that!  - it’s closer to thirty, even thirty-two years! But that really means that the length of time we’ve been working together is of little importance. We have never stopped working on ourselves, and sometimes you’re disappointed, because you have the impression that the results are mediocre compared to your expectations. But I’m telling you that on the contrary, you’ve exceeded your expectations but not only in terms of what you’d hoped for. Deeper feelings can not be judged by our appearance, it’s in the continuity of our work that we can appreciate the other person’s stature, the transformation of their spirit and the way they act with other people. I can never tell you enough to love one another.