."The best penance is to have patience with the sorrows God permits. A very good penance is to dedicate oneself to fulfill the duties of everyday with exactitude and to study and work with all our strength." (St. Peter Damian) Many of us will be looking for things to do for Lent which begins in a week. How about working on patience: patience with ourselves and with others.? We have no control over the daily circumstances of our life, especially the little things that can annoy us. But we do have control how we respond to them. We can allow them to become stumbling rocks or climbing rocks on our path to holiness. The same is true with our encounters with others. We cannot control what they will say or do to us. But we can overcome the perceived sting with patience and love or we can allow that word or action to be a knife to our heart, opening up the wound of anger and non forgiveness or the wound of talking negatively about the person. Two roads lie before us. One leads to the light and life of holiness; the other, to the darkness and death of sin.