This blog is an article for the Together Paper of Wagga Wagga Diocese July Edition.
We often associate the virtue of Patience with the ability to wait. We wait for our spouse to be ready to leave, wait for children to put on their socks and shoes, and wait for public transport. Although patience is certainly required in these moments, its heart is not so much about the act of letting time pass, but rather about bearing with what happens within us while that time passes.
But what exactly are we bearing?
The answer is often something we don’t immediately recognise: sorrow.
The core of patience is to endure through suffering. We appreciate this most easily when we think of large-scale sufferings such as cancer treatment or infertility. The sorrow involved is obvious. But what is the suffering when we bear with a date arriving late or a work meeting running behind? There is still a form of sorrow present, even if it is smaller in comparison.
Sometimes it is the sorrow of something already lost. A late date may bring the embarrassment of sitting alone in a café or the feeling of not being valued. A meeting running overtime may mean the loss of time set aside for another important task.
At other times, the sorrow is about what could still be lost. Perhaps the date will now be much shorter than anticipated, the meeting will run into another commitment, or the uncertainty surrounding whether we will have children, whether a marriage will heal, whether treatment will work, or whether we will be forgiven by someone we have hurt continues to weigh on us. These are all forms of sorrow that patience calls us to face and bear.
Suddenly, patience begins to look very different. It is no longer simply about waiting politely. It’s about remaining faithful when sorrow accompanies the pursuit of the good.
It is precisely because this virtue calls us to face suffering and endure through it that we can understand why Patience is a sub-virtue of the Cardinal Virtue of Fortitude—the virtue that calls us to have courage for the sake of the good. We explored Fortitude in more detail earlier this year, and you can read more on our website or listen to Season 2, Episode 43 of the Living Fullness Podcast.
Where Fortitude calls us to keep pursuing the good despite suffering, patience invites us not to abandon that good because of the discouragement we experience along the way.
Patience, then, is not simply allowing time to pass without becoming frustrated. Rather, it is recognising the sorrow, sitting with it—not resisting it, suppressing it or masking it—and choosing the good even with a heart that still holds sorrow. That is true virtue: not merely an external action, but an integrated response of heart, mind and behaviour ordered towards love.
Where perseverance keeps us moving forward, patience keeps our hearts from giving up.
We often need both virtues at the same time.
I see this regularly in the therapy room. A couple may attend counselling session after session with perseverance, yet by session six they can feel deeply discouraged if their relationship has not yet healed. It takes tremendous patience to acknowledge the suffering that is being endured and to continue onwards—not despite it, but with it.
The places we tend to become most impatient are not simply when we are waiting. We could be waiting to pay for an item or standing in the Communion line, and those moments do not automatically produce impatience. Rather, impatience often arises when our expectations are not met. When I’m running late in the morning, I’m much more likely to become impatient with the car travelling five kilometres under the speed limit because I experience the sorrow of feeling rushed, not arriving on time, or not having had the morning I had hoped for.
If patience is the better option, why do we choose impatience so often?
Perhaps because acknowledging our sorrow is far harder than escaping it.
It is easier to distract ourselves, blame someone else, numb, suppress, withdraw, or become angry than it is to sit honestly with sorrow. These reactions can become ways of avoiding suffering altogether rather than allowing ourselves to encounter it.
The Gospel offers us two very different responses to suffering. The thief on the cross mocks and deflects, shifting the focus away from the truth before him. The good thief, however, recognises his own suffering, acknowledges reality, and still turns towards Christ with hope.
We are called to the same response. Patience invites us not to ignore the cross, nor to pretend the suffering is not there, but to bear it and continue choosing the good with courage. The patient person is not the one who feels no sorrow, nor the one who simply waits. The patient person is the one who can carry sorrow honestly while remaining faithful. Perhaps the next time we find ourselves becoming impatient, the question is not, “Why can’t I wait?” but rather, “What sorrow am I struggling to bear?” It is often in answering that question honestly that patience begins to grow.
Written by Stina Constantine
Founder & Speaker at Virtue Ministry