CONSTANCY. - A moral virtue that gives the soul continuity in doing good, shielding it against difficulties coming from outside: discouragement, disappointments, slackness, mockery, blame, flattery, bad examples, persecutions (cf. Sum. Theol., 2a-2a, q. 137, a. 3). It is a potential virtue of fortitude. Its importance is deduced from the fact that, for fallen human nature, doing good always demands an effort; all the more so when the other difficulties mentioned above are added to the weakness of nature, difficulties which in certain circumstances and environments can impose a heroic standard of living. Forming the "fortem et tenacem propositi virum" of Horace (Carmina, III, 3) requires a will resolved to endure, come what may. Without constancy, moreover, all the other virtues and good resolutions either remain a dead letter or are condemned to sterility. For this reason Sacred Scripture insists on the necessity, especially in the spiritual life, of constancy (Eccli. 2, 16; 27, 12; Ps. 17, 38; Mt. 10, 22; Io. 4, 34; 17, 4; I Cor. 9, 24; 15, 58; II Io. 8, 9, etc.); which in the end comes down to the maxim of popular common sense: "he who perseveres wins."
Constancy, like all the other moral virtues, can be acquired or infused. Acquired, when in the purely natural field it is won by the repetition of acts (a small sacrifice a day, a good action a day, a resolution, a commitment to be observed with special care for a determined number of days) and serves fundamentally for the formation of character and personality; infused, which descends into the soul with Baptism and operates there in the supernatural field, and is acquired through prayer, the consideration of heavenly joys and of the vanity of the transitory ones of earth; of the heroic beauty, however hidden, of sacrifice, indeed even of the fulfillment of daily duty; of the reversibility of strength and grace, which every action of each person works in the souls of others.
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Celestino Testore