PATIENCE. - A moral virtue that aims to endure present evils without being disorderedly dominated by sadness (Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 136); it is therefore a potential part of fortitude.
There is a bad and blameworthy sadness: the kind that depresses and crushes and sometimes even drives one to curses and blasphemies; and there is a good and praiseworthy sadness, precisely because it is guided and moderated by patience: "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Mt. 5:5). Patience can be a simple natural virtue when the motive for exercising it is a natural good (the acquisition of knowledge or wealth, peace in the family, one's moral dignity); or it can also be supernatural when the motive concerns a supernatural good (merit, reparation, imitation and love of the Savior, the final possession of God and the means to attain it). For this reason Holy Scripture often praises and inculcates patience (Ecclesiasticus 2:3-5; Lk. 21:19; Rom. 9:1; 2 Cor. 8-10) and offers us a model of it in the entire book of Job and in the various episodes of Jesus' Passion.
The object of patience is everything that in any way opposes, causes suffering, and brings sadness; hence patience is necessary to endure the reverses of fortune, family bereavements, illnesses, exile; to endure oneself with one's changing moods and weaknesses, the faults and wrongs of others; to accept the toils and trials inherent in every effort toward good and in the fulfillment of one's duty; to submit to the designs and dispositions of Providence.
The exercise of patience admits of various degrees of perfection according to the intensity of the evil that saddens us, but also according to the manner in which we endure it: a) accepting the cup even though we would wish to avoid it, without murmuring; b) identifying with God's will and therefore willing the cup that is offered to us; c) even desiring the cup of tribulation in order to better imitate the Savior.
Patience is opposed: a) by defect, to impatience, whereby man abandons himself without control to the reaction of nature in the face of the evil that saddens him, driving him to murmuring, pessimism, or even to seeking consolations and satisfactions of dubious quality; b) by excess, to insensibility or apathy, which renders one cold in the face of one's own and others' evils.