Patience

The Virtue of the soul which is called patience is so great a gift of God that it is even said to belong to Him who bestows it, in that He waits for the wicked to amend. So, although God cannot suffer, and patience surely has its name from suffering (patiendo), we not only faithfully believe in a patient God, but also steadfastly acknowledge Him to be such. Who can explain in words the nature and the quantity of God’s patience? We say He is impassible, yet not impatient; nay, rather, extremely patient. His patience is indescribable, yet it exists as does His jealousy, His wrath, and any characteristic of this kind. But, if we conceive of these qualities as they exist in us, He has none of them. We do not experience these feelings without annoyance, but far be it from us to suspect an impassible God of suffering any annoyance. Just as He is jealous without any ill will, as He is angry without being emotionally upset, as He pities without grieving, as He is sorry without correcting any fault, so He is patient without suffering at all. Now, then, as far as the Lord grants it and the brevity of the present treatise allows, I shall explain the nature of the human patience which we can attain and which we ought to possess.

The patience of man which is good, praiseworthy, and deserving the name of virtue is said to be that by which we endure evils with equanimity so as not to abandon, through a lack of equanimity, the good through which we arrive at the better. By their unwillingness to suffer evil, the impatient do not effect their deliverance from it; instead, they bring upon themselves the suffering of more grievous ills. But the patient, who prefer to bear wrongs without committing them rather than to commit them by not enduring them, both lessen what they suffer in patience and escape worse things by which, through impatience, they would be submerged. In yielding to evils that are brief and passing, they do not destroy the good which is great and eternal, for “the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared,” the Apostle says, “with the glory to come that will be revealed in us” (Rom. 8.18). And he also says, “our present light affliction, which is for the moment, prepares for us an eternal weight of glory that is beyond all measure” (2 Cor. 4.17).

Let us then see, dearly beloved, what hardships men endure with labor and pain for the vicious objects of their love. The more they think of these as a means of greater happiness, the more unhappily do they covet them. How many extreme dangers and difficulties do they bear with the utmost patience for the sake of false riches, how many for empty honors, how many out of devotion to public games and shows! We see men eager for money, glory, and lust, who, to attain their desires and to keep what they have acquired, suffer, not through absolute need but with a culpable will, the heat of the sun, rain, icy cold, billows and stormy tempests, the bitterness and uncertainty of wars, the strokes of terrific blows and dreadful wounds. But these insane acts, somehow, seem licit.

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And when men bear up wonderfully in the face of many dreadful sufferings, now for their unlawful desires or even crimes, and again for their temporal well-being in this life, they well remind us how much we ought to endure for the good life, so that even afterwards it can be eternal and. unlimited by time, secure in true happiness without the loss of any advantage. The Lord says: “By your patience you will win your souls” (Lk. 21.19). He does not say: “your homes, your luxuries,” but “your souls.” If, then, the soul suffers so much to possess the means by which it may be lost, how much ought it to suffer that it may not be lost. Then, to mention something blameless, if the soul suffers so much for the well-being of its own flesh at the hands of doctors cutting or burning the same, how much should it bear for its own safety amid the fury of any enemies whatsoever. Doctors, by inflicting pain on the body, try to keep it from death, while its enemies, on the other hand, by threatening the body with punishment and death, are working for the eternal death of the body and soul in hell.

Wise and foreseeing counsel for the body scorns, for justice sake, its temporal welfare, and patiently endures punishment and death for the same reason. It is, indeed, of the redemption of the body which will occur at the end of the world that the Apostle speaks when he says: “we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8.23). And then he adds: “For in hope were we saved. But hope that is seen is not hope. For how can a man hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Rom. 8.24-25).

*From St. Augustine, Patience in Treatises on Various Subjects (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1952), Chs. 1-3, 7.