PERSEVERANCE. - The virtue that disposes a person to continue in good, according to the dictates of reason, despite the prolonging of troubles and difficulties (Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 128, a. 1). Knowing how to resist in one or a few difficulties is easy for many; struggling for a long time until they are overcome constitutes a particular virtue. In this respect, perseverance sometimes refers only to the disposition of the will; at other times to actual execution. Moreover, it can concern either individual good objects or one's whole life.
Perseverance is all the more worthy of praise the more long-lasting the endurance of difficulties is. Sacred Scripture exhorts to perseverance, joining it to patience as a condition for attaining the reward (cf. Eccli. 5, 12; Mt. 10, 22; 24, 13; Lk. 21, 19; Heb. 3, 6; 10, 36; Jas. 5, 11; Rev. 2, 10), and condemns those who, having begun a good work, turn back (Lk. 9, 62). But as a supernatural virtue, which disposes the soul to continue in good worthy of divine reward, it requires Grace, at least habitual Grace (Sum Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 137, a. 4).
OPPOSING VICES
Opposed to perseverance are: by defect, softness; by excess, pertinacity. The former creates an excessive fear of difficulties, causing one to withdraw from good resolutions because of the tedium and difficulties involved; the latter drives a resolution, initially good, beyond reasonableness, without withdrawing before the evidence of contrary truth or the manifest uselessness of the work, out of mere stubbornness: «To continue in good is a virtue, to persist in what is false or unreasonable is a vice» (loc. cit., q. 138, aa. 1-2).
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