The Place of Patience in Christian Life
One Will always Encounter Trials in Life
Writing Timothy from his prison in Rome where he will soon suffer martyrdom, the Apostle St Paul warns his disciple that “everyone who wants to live a holy life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim 3:12). In the same letter he points out, “I am already poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure” (2 Tim 4:6). And he adds with holy pride, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7).
St Paul was thus advising his disciple on an ordinary occurrence in the life of a Christian: trials. Christ himself had prepared the apostles: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).
In spite of his own weaknesses and the opposition from without, a Christian enters the daily struggle full of joy, not passive or frightened; he considers himself a winner in Christ. Thus, St James bids, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops patience. Patience perfects the work [of God] so that you may become mature and complete, not lacking anything” (Jas 1:2-4).
What Is Patience?
When we hear about patience, we usually think of one of those situations that get into our nerves: “I really have to be patient with this person.” We are thinking of patience as some sort of control over the irritation and anger we experience when we face people who do something wrong or inconvenient for us. In sum, we think of patience as some sort of serenity: the power of enduring trouble, suffering, and inconvenience, without complaining.
Or we might think of patience as some capacity to bear the delay of goods which do not come as fast as we would like: “I have to be patient before I save enough to buy a car.” This notion refers to the capacity to bear sacrifices for a long time until we attain a certain joy. Patience here appears as the ability to wait for results, to deal with problems without haste.
False Attitudes to Suffering
Certain serene attitudes towards suffering are not to be confused with the genuine virtue of patience.
The stoic attitude is one of endurance but only because it considers suffering inescapable no matter what you may do.
The Buddhist attitude is one of eliminating suffering by killing any desire and thus any frustration or suffering.
The attitude of apathetic inertia is that of the lukewarm person who prefers to remain in his situation because he thinks that any change will demand some effort or that he might end up in a worse situation.
Besides, we find an array of attitudes that are products of too much love of comfort or laziness. Instead of abandoning oneself to God’s providence, the person merely waits for the suitable moment to seek revenge or his own personal affirmation. In these cases, egoism and pride have taken the place of humility, the characteristic of true patience.
These and other attitudes lack something to make them virtuous –the subject does not endure suffering for the sake of an objective good, which is the goal of any virtue.
Patience as a Human Virtue
From a human–purely ethical–point of view, patience is necessary for any person; it seems logical that we should bear difficulties to compensate for the evil we have done. But this motive is not all about patience.
We read in the Book of Proverbs that “better a patient son than a strong one, and he that is master of his will is better than he who is the conqueror of nations” (Prov 16,32). Here patience is related to self control and will power.
Definitively, patience has to do with suffering. If we want to advance a definition of it as a human virtue (that is, without any relation to God or the influence of his grace in our life), we could say that patience is the capacity or habit of enduring evil, adversity, or pain with fortitude. In fact, the classics place patience as part of the virtue of fortitude.
Fortitude is the human virtue that controls the negative emotions of despair, fear, and anger enabling the person to continue the pursuit of a difficult good even when facing the greatest dangers to bodily life. Patience, related to fortitude, is the virtue that adds serenity to the soul in order to control the emotions of discouragement, sadness, and irritation in the face of persistent or lasting evil. We have then two elements that define patience: the lasting or persistent presence of suffering (which is also proper to fortitude), and the serenity to endure it without giving up or getting angry.
The Christian Virtue of Patience
So much for the human virtue of patience. Now, what is characteristic of Christian patience? What is specific in Christian patience comes,
- from the kind of evil that is endured,
- from the power used to endure and,
- from the motivation of the person enduring evil.
i) the kind of evil
The human virtue of patience encounters suffering as anything contrary to one’s liking. Christian patience faces the suffering that comes from being or acting as a genuine Christian or any other suffering which may come along our way to heaven.
ii) the power
St Paul tells us that patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit maintaining a special relationship with hope and charity (cf. Gal 5:22; Rom 8:25; 1 Cor 13:4). In human patience we rely on sheer will power or self-control of negative emotions to overcome difficulties. A person moved by Christian patience relies also on the power of God’s grace. This kind of patience appears as a supernatural power from Christ to take with serenity whatever long suffering may come or be demanded in order to accept or carry out the will of God.
Patience, as a supernatural virtue, proceeds from charity; thus, it is not merely a passive disposition: not to react, to hold it. Real patience is more than that, it is to accept God’s will and God’s ways, no matter what happens.
iii) the motivation
A person endowed with human patience is motivated by the hope of obtaining a certain natural good or joy; he wants to “succeed,” to get what he likes. All these are human motives. The three theological virtues, faith, hope and charity motivate Christian patience. The person wants to please God and attain Him or his blessings; he seeks union with Christ the Redeemer, and together with Him wants to overcome the effects of sin in oneself and in the others.
After these considerations we may state the definition of Christian patience. Patience, a part of the virtue of fortitude, is the virtue that enables a person to bear physical and moral sufferings, trying circumstances, and obstinate personalities without sadness of spirit or dejection of heart, but with equanimity born of love of God.
The Need for Christian Patience
Any person needs human patience to get to the good things one wants. We need the Christian virtue of patience to attain our supernatural goal. A Christian person may reason out and apply a parallel logic of facts: Things were not easy for Christ, and his disciples; things may not come easy for me either.
To develop the habit of prayer and contemplative life an ordinary Christian may have to persevere through years of ascetical struggle.
To help others to be good Christians (this is apostolate), he will have to go through periods of time without getting full response.
Again, like any other man, a Christian will be tempted in different ways and he may fall repeatedly; he will need patience to avoid sadness or anger and to endure the recurring temptation of giving up his efforts to become a better Christian and a saint.
Why has Christianity always set forward a life of renunciation, mortification, self-denial, patience, which looks negative? Simply because the message of salvation of Christ, centered on the Cross and his Resurrection, demands so.
Besides the human motive–for a man of faith–patience has necessarily another, more important, supernatural motive: to atone with Christ accompanying him in his sufferings for all mankind; thus, a Christian gains more supernatural merit.
The practice of the virtue of patience will originate abundant mortifications; these mortifications performed out of love of God will make the person humble, patient, and very united to God.
The Enemies of Patience
From the analysis above we gather that patience has to do with pursuing a good and enduring suffering in the process. We can see now that the enemies of patience are basically two: (a) falling into discouragement and sadness, or (b) falling into anger. By the first we stop from pursuing the good, by the second we try to get rid of a necessary suffering in the wrong way.
In pursuing the good, man has to face the three enemies of the soul: the devil, the world, and the flesh. Thus, facing failure, one needs the virtue of patience to react at once against sadness, and avoid drifting with discouragement. Sadness may result from a total lack of stability in facing difficulties. This spiritual depression is a kind of impatience; it is followed by resentment manifested in words and in deeds.
A person may also respond to a present evil by over-reacting and getting angry with everyone; anger is another outlet for impatience. Impatience triumphs when we allow the trials of everyday life to dominate us; thus, we resort to grumbling, complaining, constant bickering, and to fits of bad temper.
Degrees of Patience
We can distinguish five main stages in a person who is growing in the virtue of patience:
i) Resignation without complaint or impatience with respect to the crosses that the Lord sends us or permits us to endure.
ii) Peace and serenity in the face of affliction, without the sadness or depression that sometimes accompany mere resignation.
iii) Acceptance of God’s will and God’s ways, which lead us to desire and accept whatever cross comes our way.
iv) Total and complete joy for being associated with God in the mystery of the Cross.
v) The folly of the Cross, which made St Paul feel strong in his suffering while preaching Christ crucified; what looks as foolishness to men, is really the wisdom of God:
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God... Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength (1 Cor 1:18.22-25).
For this reason a Christian may prefer pain to pleasure and place his delight in external or internal suffering by which one is configured with Christ.
How to Grow in Patience
As with any other supernatural virtue, we need the light and power of grace along with our human effort to grow in patience. We can mention some specific ways of prayer that combine God’s grace and human effort.
Aside from prayer of petition, we need meditative prayer used in specific ways. The so-called prayer of serenity combines both. In the face of a persistent suffering we need to discern with the Lord whether He wants us to change or solve the cause of it or, rather, to accept it; this is meditative prayer. Then we have to ask the Lord either courage to change the cause or patience to endure the suffering we cannot change.
In the case of persons who resist our efforts to help them change, we need also reflective prayer on the meaning of Christian suffering and how to go about it. This we do by reading and reflecting on God’s patience with sinners, on the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We also learn from other scriptural passages and from the writings and lives of the saints and other Christian authors.
The rest of this book is a collection of writings that will help us to effect that kind of reflective and prayerful reading.
Hopefully, the prayerful reader will grow from simple acceptance or resignation of sufferings up to the folly of the Cross –that of rejoicing with the Lord Jesus in his work of salvation.
Writing Timothy from his prison in Rome where he will soon suffer martyrdom, the Apostle St Paul warns his disciple that “everyone who wants to live a holy life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim 3:12). In the same letter he points out, “I am already poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure” (2 Tim 4:6). And he adds with holy pride, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7).
St Paul was thus advising his disciple on an ordinary occurrence in the life of a Christian: trials. Christ himself had prepared the apostles: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).
In spite of his own weaknesses and the opposition from without, a Christian enters the daily struggle full of joy, not passive or frightened; he considers himself a winner in Christ. Thus, St James bids, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops patience. Patience perfects the work [of God] so that you may become mature and complete, not lacking anything” (Jas 1:2-4).
What Is Patience?
When we hear about patience, we usually think of one of those situations that get into our nerves: “I really have to be patient with this person.” We are thinking of patience as some sort of control over the irritation and anger we experience when we face people who do something wrong or inconvenient for us. In sum, we think of patience as some sort of serenity: the power of enduring trouble, suffering, and inconvenience, without complaining.
Or we might think of patience as some capacity to bear the delay of goods which do not come as fast as we would like: “I have to be patient before I save enough to buy a car.” This notion refers to the capacity to bear sacrifices for a long time until we attain a certain joy. Patience here appears as the ability to wait for results, to deal with problems without haste.
False Attitudes to Suffering
Certain serene attitudes towards suffering are not to be confused with the genuine virtue of patience.
The stoic attitude is one of endurance but only because it considers suffering inescapable no matter what you may do.
The Buddhist attitude is one of eliminating suffering by killing any desire and thus any frustration or suffering.
The attitude of apathetic inertia is that of the lukewarm person who prefers to remain in his situation because he thinks that any change will demand some effort or that he might end up in a worse situation.
Besides, we find an array of attitudes that are products of too much love of comfort or laziness. Instead of abandoning oneself to God’s providence, the person merely waits for the suitable moment to seek revenge or his own personal affirmation. In these cases, egoism and pride have taken the place of humility, the characteristic of true patience.
These and other attitudes lack something to make them virtuous –the subject does not endure suffering for the sake of an objective good, which is the goal of any virtue.
Patience as a Human Virtue
From a human–purely ethical–point of view, patience is necessary for any person; it seems logical that we should bear difficulties to compensate for the evil we have done. But this motive is not all about patience.
We read in the Book of Proverbs that “better a patient son than a strong one, and he that is master of his will is better than he who is the conqueror of nations” (Prov 16,32). Here patience is related to self control and will power.
Definitively, patience has to do with suffering. If we want to advance a definition of it as a human virtue (that is, without any relation to God or the influence of his grace in our life), we could say that patience is the capacity or habit of enduring evil, adversity, or pain with fortitude. In fact, the classics place patience as part of the virtue of fortitude.
Fortitude is the human virtue that controls the negative emotions of despair, fear, and anger enabling the person to continue the pursuit of a difficult good even when facing the greatest dangers to bodily life. Patience, related to fortitude, is the virtue that adds serenity to the soul in order to control the emotions of discouragement, sadness, and irritation in the face of persistent or lasting evil. We have then two elements that define patience: the lasting or persistent presence of suffering (which is also proper to fortitude), and the serenity to endure it without giving up or getting angry.
The Christian Virtue of Patience
So much for the human virtue of patience. Now, what is characteristic of Christian patience? What is specific in Christian patience comes,
- from the kind of evil that is endured,
- from the power used to endure and,
- from the motivation of the person enduring evil.
i) the kind of evil
The human virtue of patience encounters suffering as anything contrary to one’s liking. Christian patience faces the suffering that comes from being or acting as a genuine Christian or any other suffering which may come along our way to heaven.
ii) the power
St Paul tells us that patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit maintaining a special relationship with hope and charity (cf. Gal 5:22; Rom 8:25; 1 Cor 13:4). In human patience we rely on sheer will power or self-control of negative emotions to overcome difficulties. A person moved by Christian patience relies also on the power of God’s grace. This kind of patience appears as a supernatural power from Christ to take with serenity whatever long suffering may come or be demanded in order to accept or carry out the will of God.
Patience, as a supernatural virtue, proceeds from charity; thus, it is not merely a passive disposition: not to react, to hold it. Real patience is more than that, it is to accept God’s will and God’s ways, no matter what happens.
iii) the motivation
A person endowed with human patience is motivated by the hope of obtaining a certain natural good or joy; he wants to “succeed,” to get what he likes. All these are human motives. The three theological virtues, faith, hope and charity motivate Christian patience. The person wants to please God and attain Him or his blessings; he seeks union with Christ the Redeemer, and together with Him wants to overcome the effects of sin in oneself and in the others.
After these considerations we may state the definition of Christian patience. Patience, a part of the virtue of fortitude, is the virtue that enables a person to bear physical and moral sufferings, trying circumstances, and obstinate personalities without sadness of spirit or dejection of heart, but with equanimity born of love of God.
The Need for Christian Patience
Any person needs human patience to get to the good things one wants. We need the Christian virtue of patience to attain our supernatural goal. A Christian person may reason out and apply a parallel logic of facts: Things were not easy for Christ, and his disciples; things may not come easy for me either.
To develop the habit of prayer and contemplative life an ordinary Christian may have to persevere through years of ascetical struggle.
To help others to be good Christians (this is apostolate), he will have to go through periods of time without getting full response.
Again, like any other man, a Christian will be tempted in different ways and he may fall repeatedly; he will need patience to avoid sadness or anger and to endure the recurring temptation of giving up his efforts to become a better Christian and a saint.
Why has Christianity always set forward a life of renunciation, mortification, self-denial, patience, which looks negative? Simply because the message of salvation of Christ, centered on the Cross and his Resurrection, demands so.
Besides the human motive–for a man of faith–patience has necessarily another, more important, supernatural motive: to atone with Christ accompanying him in his sufferings for all mankind; thus, a Christian gains more supernatural merit.
The practice of the virtue of patience will originate abundant mortifications; these mortifications performed out of love of God will make the person humble, patient, and very united to God.
The Enemies of Patience
From the analysis above we gather that patience has to do with pursuing a good and enduring suffering in the process. We can see now that the enemies of patience are basically two: (a) falling into discouragement and sadness, or (b) falling into anger. By the first we stop from pursuing the good, by the second we try to get rid of a necessary suffering in the wrong way.
In pursuing the good, man has to face the three enemies of the soul: the devil, the world, and the flesh. Thus, facing failure, one needs the virtue of patience to react at once against sadness, and avoid drifting with discouragement. Sadness may result from a total lack of stability in facing difficulties. This spiritual depression is a kind of impatience; it is followed by resentment manifested in words and in deeds.
A person may also respond to a present evil by over-reacting and getting angry with everyone; anger is another outlet for impatience. Impatience triumphs when we allow the trials of everyday life to dominate us; thus, we resort to grumbling, complaining, constant bickering, and to fits of bad temper.
Degrees of Patience
We can distinguish five main stages in a person who is growing in the virtue of patience:
i) Resignation without complaint or impatience with respect to the crosses that the Lord sends us or permits us to endure.
ii) Peace and serenity in the face of affliction, without the sadness or depression that sometimes accompany mere resignation.
iii) Acceptance of God’s will and God’s ways, which lead us to desire and accept whatever cross comes our way.
iv) Total and complete joy for being associated with God in the mystery of the Cross.
v) The folly of the Cross, which made St Paul feel strong in his suffering while preaching Christ crucified; what looks as foolishness to men, is really the wisdom of God:
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God... Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength (1 Cor 1:18.22-25).
For this reason a Christian may prefer pain to pleasure and place his delight in external or internal suffering by which one is configured with Christ.
How to Grow in Patience
As with any other supernatural virtue, we need the light and power of grace along with our human effort to grow in patience. We can mention some specific ways of prayer that combine God’s grace and human effort.
Aside from prayer of petition, we need meditative prayer used in specific ways. The so-called prayer of serenity combines both. In the face of a persistent suffering we need to discern with the Lord whether He wants us to change or solve the cause of it or, rather, to accept it; this is meditative prayer. Then we have to ask the Lord either courage to change the cause or patience to endure the suffering we cannot change.
In the case of persons who resist our efforts to help them change, we need also reflective prayer on the meaning of Christian suffering and how to go about it. This we do by reading and reflecting on God’s patience with sinners, on the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We also learn from other scriptural passages and from the writings and lives of the saints and other Christian authors.
The rest of this book is a collection of writings that will help us to effect that kind of reflective and prayerful reading.
Hopefully, the prayerful reader will grow from simple acceptance or resignation of sufferings up to the folly of the Cross –that of rejoicing with the Lord Jesus in his work of salvation.