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| Further Reasons for Practising Patience. Its Connection with the Beatitudes.
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Chapter XI.—Further
Reasons for Practising Patience. Its Connection with the
Beatitudes.
After these principal material causes of
impatience, registered to the best of our ability, why should we wander
out of our way among the rest,—what are found at home, what
abroad? Wide and diffusive is the Evil One’s operation, hurling
manifold irritations of our spirit, and sometimes trifling ones,
sometimes very great. But the trifling ones you may contemn from their
very littleness; to the very great ones you may yield in regard of
their overpoweringness. Where the injury is less, there is no necessity
for impatience; but where the injury is greater, there more necessary
is the remedy for the injury—patience. Let us strive,
therefore, to endure the inflictions of the Evil One, that the
counter-zeal of our equanimity may mock the zeal of the foe. If,
however, we ourselves, either by imprudence or else voluntarily, draw
upon ourselves anything, let us meet with equal patience what we have
to blame ourselves for. Moreover, if we believe that some inflictions
are sent on us by the Lord, to whom should we more exhibit patience
than to the Lord? Nay, He teaches9124
| 9124 Docet. But a plausible
conjecture, “decet,” “it becomes us,” has been
made. | us to give
thanks and rejoice, over and above, at being thought worthy of divine
chastisement. “Whom I love,” saith He, “I
chasten.”9125
| 9125 Prov. iii. 11, 12; Heb. xii. 5, 6; Rev.
iii. 19. | O blessed servant,
on whose amendment the Lord is intent! with whom He deigns to be wroth!
whom He does not deceive by dissembling His reproofs! On every side,
therefore, we are bound to the duty of exercising patience, from
whatever quarter, either by our own errors or else by the snares of the
Evil One, we incur the Lord’s reproofs. Of that duty great is the
reward—namely, happiness. For whom but the patient has the
Lord called happy, in saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens?”9126
No one, assuredly, is “poor in
spirit,” except he be humble. Well, who is humble, except he be
patient? For no one can abase himself without patience, in the first
instance, to bear the act of abasement. “Blessed,” saith
He, “are the weepers and mourners.”9127
Who, without patience, is tolerant of such unhappinesses? And so to
such, “consolation” and “laughter” are
promised. “Blessed are the gentle:”9128
under this term, surely, the impatient
cannot possibly be classed. Again, when He marks “the
peacemakers”9129
with the same title
of felicity, and names them “sons of God,” pray have the
impatient any affinity with “peace?” Even a fool may
perceive that. When, however, He says, “Rejoice and exult,
as often as they shall curse and persecute you; for very great is your
reward in heaven,”9130
of course it is not
to the impatience of exultation9131
| 9131 Exultationis
impatientiæ. |
that He makes that promise; because no one will
“exult” in adversities unless he have first learnt to
contemn them; no one will contemn them unless he have learnt to
practise patience.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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