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| Chapter XIII. The answer.
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Chapter XIII.
The answer.
Piamun: True patience and
tranquillity is neither gained nor retained without profound humility
of heart: and if it has sprung from this source, there will be no need
either of the good offices of the cell or of the refuge of the desert.
For it will seek no external support from anything, if it has the
internal support of the virtue of humility, its mother and its
guardian. But if we are disturbed when attacked by anyone it is clear
that the foundations of humility have not been securely laid in us, and
therefore at the outbreak even of a small storm, our whole edifice is
shaken and ruinously disturbed. For patience would not be worthy of
praise and admiration if it only preserved its purposed tranquillity
when attacked by no darts of enemies, but it is grand and glorious
because when the storms of temptation beat upon it, it remains unmoved.
For wherein it is believed that a man is annoyed and hurt by adversity,
therein is he strengthened the more; and he is therein the more
exercised, wherein he is thought to be annoyed. For everybody knows
that patience gets its name from the passions and endurance, and so it
is clear that no one can be called patient but one who bears without
annoyance all the indignities offered to him, and so it is not without
reason that he is praised by Solomon: “Better is the patient
man than the strong, and he
who restrains his anger than he who takes a city;” and again:
“For a long-suffering man is mighty in prudence, but a
faint-hearted man is very foolish.”2086
When then anyone is overcome by a wrong,
and blazes up in a fire of anger, we should not hold that the
bitterness of the insult offered to him is the cause of his sin,
but rather the manifestation of secret weakness, in accordance
with the parable of our Lord and Saviour which He spoke about the two
houses,2087
one of which
was founded upon a rock, and the other upon the sand, on both of which
He says that the tempest of rain and waters and storm beat equally: but
that one which was founded on the solid rock felt no harm at all from
the violence of the shock, while that which was built on the shifting
and moving sand at once collapsed. And it certainly appears that it
fell, not because it was struck by the rush of the storms and torrents,
but because it was imprudently built upon the sand. For a saint does
not differ from a sinner in this, that he is not himself tempted in the
same way, but because he is not worsted even by a great assault, while
the other is overcome even by a slight temptation. For the fortitude of
any good man would not, as we said, be worthy of praise, if his victory
was gained without his being tempted, as most certainly there is no
room for victory where there is no struggle and conflict: for
“Blessed is the man that endureth temptation, for when he has
been proved he shall receive the crown of life which God hath promised
to them that love Him.”2088
According to
the Apostle Paul also “Strength is made perfect” not in
ease and delights but “in weakness.” “For
behold,” says He, “I have made thee this day a fortified
city, and a pillar of iron, and a wall of brass, over all the land, to
the kings of Judah, and to the princes thereof, and to the priests
thereof, and to all the people of the land. And they shall fight
against thee, and shall not prevail: for I am with thee, saith the
Lord, to deliver thee.”2089
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