PATIENCE. – A moral virtue aimed at enabling one to endure present evils without allowing oneself to be disorderly dominated by sadness (Sum. Theol., 2ª-2ª, q. 136); it is therefore a potential part of fortitude.
There is a bad and blameworthy sadness, which depresses and overwhelms and sometimes even drives one to imprecations and blasphemies; and there is a good and praiseworthy sadness, precisely because it is guided and moderated by p.: « Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted » (Mt. 5, 5). P. may be a simple natural virtue when the reason for exercising it is a natural good (the acquisition of knowledge or wealth, peace in the family, one’s own moral dignity); or it may also be supernatural when the reason concerns a supernatural good (merit, reparation, imitation and love of the Savior, the final possession of God and the means of attaining it). For this reason Sacred Scripture praises and inculcates p. many times (Eccl. 2, 3-5; Lc. 21, 19; Rom. 9, 1; II Cor. 8-10) and offers us a model of it throughout the Book of Job and in the various episodes of the Passion of Jesus.
The object of p. is everything that in any way opposes us, makes us suffer, and causes sadness; hence p. is necessary for enduring reverses of fortune, family bereavements, illnesses, exile; for bearing with oneself, with one’s changeable moods and weaknesses, and with the faults and wrongs of others; for accepting the labors and trials inherent in every effort toward the good and in the fulfillment of one’s duty; for submitting to the designs and dispositions of Providence.
The exercise of p. admits various degrees of perfection, according not only to the intensity of the evil that saddens us, but also to the manner in which we endure it: a) accepting without complaint the chalice that one would nevertheless wish to have removed; b) conforming oneself to the will of God and therefore desiring the chalice that is offered to us; c) indeed desiring the chalice of tribulation in order to imitate the Savior more fully.
Opposed to p. are: a) by defect, impatience, through which a person abandons himself without control to nature’s reaction before the evil that saddens him and drives him to grumbling, pessimism, or even to seek consolations and satisfactions of a dubious kind; b) by excess, insensibility or apathy, which makes one cold in the face of one’s own and others’ evils.