“Been waiting for the bus?” I ask. “Too long,” answers Mrs. Kowalski, one of the regulars. “Late again, is it? Guess I’ll try for the afternoon run.” “Smart,” she answers, “but I’ve been sitting here too long to leave now.” Is she, gentle reader, throwing good money after bad?

Sometimes we wait and other times we warn, as in, “Just you wait…” Remember the classic lines from My Fair Lady. Julie Andrews, as Eliza Doolittle, is seriously miffed with Rex Harrison’s Henry Higgins. And so, she lets loose with

Just you wait, ‘enry ‘iggins, just you wait
You’ll be sorry but your tears’ll be too late
You’ll be broke and I’ll have money
Will I help you? Don’t be funny
Just you wait, ‘enry ‘iggins, just you wait.

Still, even on a somber note, waiting needn’t be futile or fearful. John Milton, knowing that he would soon be blind, asked, “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?” The answer came straightway:

God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.

Even so, the standing and waiting can be hard. How are we to manage? Responses differ! Perhaps Simone Weil’s most accessible book is titled Waiting on God. It’s a call to the transcendence to which modernity is often deaf. Samuel Beckett’s absurdist work Waiting for Godot features a chap who never comes, and Beckett discouraged any effort to interpret his play to be anything more than an empty existentialist yowl.

The pressing question, then, is what courage would look like in our always interesting and often desperate times? It’s a question that demands an answer.

St. Thomas Aquinas, the Common Doctor, identifies courage as the virtue that enables us to reason well even in the context of what threatens us. In colloquial terms, to keep our heads about us! He distinguishes, as well, between the courage that directly attacks what we fear and the courage that “stands immovable in the midst of dangers” (ST II-II, q, 123. art. 6.). The first kind of courage, call it “daring,” has an immediate appeal. But it’s courage as endurance that is the more telling, and that is for three reasons. First, endurance comes into play when the threat is especially great; were it not so great, we could challenge it straightway. Second, endurance deals with a threat that we already face, while daring is directed at what still awaits us. And third, endurance calls for a long-haul commitment, but a daring sally can still anticipate a swift victory. Perhaps one might challenge Thomas’s judgment by countering that endurance, however admirable, is something passive. Unlike a daring attack, endurance is a kind of suffering—a “passion,” so to speak. Thomas’s reply is instructive. “Endurance,” he teaches, “denotes a passion of the body, but an action of the soul cleaving most resolutely to the good,” and this is decisive since “virtue concerns the soul rather than the body” (ST II-II, q. 123, art. 6, ad. 2).

Here’s a medical example of endurance that I’ve just put in my “old age isn’t for sissies” folder. Richard, a longtime family friend, is now 90 years old and struggling with congestive heart failure. His daughter recently drove him to the emergency room because his symptoms were worsening. The result? He spent a full night and all of another day in the emergency room. Only then was he transferred to a hospital room. Some 70 people, it turns out, had been ahead of him in the queue. And all of this played out in a university town with a major medical complex.

Our interesting and even desperate times have demanding political, social, and personal dimensions. They often test us in ways that we have not imagined and that at times we have not expected. How are we to have the courage to keep faith as we try to navigate both? The liturgical season of Lent brings with it a sharpened sense of waiting. We solemnly mark the Passion of Christ as we await the Savior’s Resurrection. And while we wait, our faith, St. Paul tells us, serves as the “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). God, who desires the salvation of all, freely gives us this saving faith (1 Timothy 2:4). How amazing a grace!