One day, years ago, I was sitting with a co-worker at our work lunch table and I was lamenting the fact that I wasn’t a patient person.
I said to her, “I pray all the time for God to make me patient and I’m still the same.”
She kind of good-naturedly laughed at my ignorance, as she was more mature in her faith than me, and said, “Amy, God’s not going to wave a magic wand and just make you patient. You’re going to have trials and you are going to have to practice being patient. He’s not just going to make you have a virtue, like Poof!”
This was a bit shocking to me as crazy as that sounds. For most of my life, I had been expecting God to just magically infuse me with the gift of patience, never once thinking that I’d have to practice at it.
I was just waiting to be made patient. 
Once I realized that I had a role to play in all this, well, that changed my mindset and I realized that I hadn’t been holding myself responsible for my impatient ways. Because I hadn’t, I felt it was out of my control.
The virtues have to be practiced and they have to be practiced while praying for grace from God. During Lent, we are practicing many virtues—patience, fortitude, piety, gratitude, generosity, humility—and we must couple our practice with prayer.
We must meet God in the middle, Catholic Pilgrims. We should desire to become virtuous, practice it, AND ask God for the strength and the ability to live out the virtues well. Only then will we see our lives transformed.
Have a blessed Monday.
