Patience Learned from God

Cyprian speaks of this treatise in his letter to Jubaianus: “Love of spirit, the honor of our body of overseers, the bond of faith, and harmony among the priests are all kept up by us with patience and gentleness. That is why, with the best of our poor ability, and by the Lord’s permission and prompting, we have written a short book, On the Advantage of Patience, which we have sent to you for the sake of the love we share.” A.D. 256.

As I am about to speak to you about patience, dear brothers, and to set out its advantages and its benefits, where should I begin rather than here — that even now, for you to listen to me, patience is needed, since you cannot carry out even this duty of hearing and learning without it? Sound talk and sound reasoning are only really learned if what is said is heard patiently. And among all the other paths of heavenly discipline, along which the road of our hope and our faith is laid out toward winning the rewards God gives, I find nothing more to our advantage — nothing more useful for living, nothing more helpful toward glory — than that we who labor at the Lord’s commands with the obedience of fear and devotion should above everything else keep watch, with all our watchfulness, over patience. [c]

Philosophers claim to pursue this virtue as well, but in their case the patience is as false as the wisdom is. How can a man be either wise or patient when he has known neither the wisdom nor the patience of God? God himself warns us. He says of those who look wise to themselves in this world: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will reject the understanding of the prudent.” And the blessed apostle Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit and sent out to call and train the nations, testifies and instructs us: “See that no one robs you through philosophy and empty deceit, following the tradition of men, following the elements of the world, and not following Christ; because in him all the fullness of divinity lives.” And in another place he says: “Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks he is wise, let him become a fool to this world, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. As it is written: I will catch the wise in their own craftiness. And again: The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are foolish.” [d]

So if the wisdom among them is not true, their patience cannot be true either. For the wise man is the one who is humble and gentle — and we do not see philosophers being either humble or gentle. They are hugely pleased with themselves, and by that very self-pleasure they displease God. It is plain, then, that patience is not real among them, where what you find is the insolent nerve of a paraded freedom and the shameless showing-off of a bared and half-naked chest.

But we, dear brothers, are philosophers not in words but in deeds. We do not put our wisdom on display in what we wear but in what is true. We know the virtues better by conscience than by boasting about them. We do not talk great things; we live them. So let us, as servants and worshipers of God, show in our obedience of spirit the patience we learn from heavenly teaching. This is a virtue we hold in common with God. Patience begins with him; from him its glory and its dignity rise. The source and the greatness of patience come from God, its author. A man ought to love what is dear to God, and the good that the divine Majesty loves, it also commends. If God is our Lord and our Father, let us copy the patience of our Lord as well as of our Father — because it is a servant’s business to obey, no less than it is a son’s business not to be untrue to his line.

But how great is the patience in God! He bears, and bears most patiently, the profane temples, the images made of earth, and the sacrilegious rites men have set up in contempt of his majesty and his honor. He makes the day begin and the light of the sun rise alike on the good and on the evil. When he waters the earth with showers, no one is shut out from what he gives: on the righteous and the unrighteous alike he sends down his rain, and does not sort them out. We see that the seasons serve, at God’s command, with an equal patience that is never divided up — serving the guilty and the guiltless, the religious and the godless, the thankful and the unthankful. The elements wait on them all. The winds blow, the springs run, the harvests grow heavy, the grapes in the vineyards ripen, the trees are loaded with fruit, the woods put on their leaves, the meadows their green. [h]

And though God is provoked by frequent offenses — no, by continual ones — he softens his anger. He waits patiently for the day of repayment that he has fixed once for all. Revenge is in his power, and still he prefers to keep patience a long while: bearing with us mercifully, that is, and putting the day off, so that if it could somehow happen, the long-drawn-out harm might at some point be changed, and a man caught in the infection of errors and crimes might turn to God even at this late hour. He warns us of it himself and says: “I do not want the death of the one who is dying, so much as that he should turn back and live.” And again: “Return to me, says the Lord.” And again: “Return to the Lord your God, for he is merciful and gracious and patient and full of pity, and one who turns his sentence back from the harm he threatened.”

The blessed apostle points to this too, and calls the sinner back to repentance: “Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long patience, not knowing that the patience and the goodness of God is leading you to repentance? But by your hardness and your unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and of the revealing of God’s righteous judgment, who will repay each one according to his works.” He says God’s judgment is just precisely because it is slow — because it is long and greatly put off, so that by God’s long patience a man may be helped toward eternal life. Punishment is carried out on the godless man and the sinner at the point when repentance for the sin can no longer do him any good.

And so that we may understand more fully, dear brothers, that patience is a thing belonging to God, and that whoever is calm and patient and gentle is imitating God the Father — when the Lord was giving in his Gospel the commands that lead to salvation, and bringing out divine warnings, and training his disciples toward completeness, he laid this down and said: “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hold your enemy in hatred. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the good and on the evil, and rains on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what more are you doing? Do not the nations do the same thing? Be complete, then, as your Father in heaven is complete.” He said that this is how the children of God become complete. He showed that this is how they are finished off, and taught that this is how they are put back by a heavenly birth: if the patience of God our Father lives in us, and if the likeness of God, which Adam lost by sinning, shows and shines out in what we do. What a glory it is to become like God! What great happiness, to have among our virtues something that can be set alongside the praises given to God! [l]

And Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, dear brothers, did not teach this in words only; he carried it out in what he did. He had said that he came down for this very purpose, to do his Father’s will. Among the other wonders of his powers, by which he showed the marks of a divine majesty, he also kept up his Father’s patience in the steadiness of his endurance. In fact all his actions, from his coming itself, have patience for their companion. First of all, coming down from that height of heaven to the things of earth, the Son of God did not think it beneath him to put on human flesh; and though he was no sinner himself, to carry other people’s sins. He set his immortality aside for the time being and let himself become mortal, so that the guiltless might be put to death for the salvation of the guilty. [m]

The Lord is baptized by the servant. The one who is about to grant the forgiveness of sins does not refuse to wash his own body in the washing of new birth. He fasts for forty days — he by whom others are fed. He goes hungry and is starved, so that those who had been hungry for the word and for grace might be filled with heavenly bread. He wrestles with the devil who tempts him and, content simply to have beaten the enemy, fights no further than with words. He did not rule his disciples as a master rules slaves; he was kind and gentle, and loved them with a brother’s love. He even thought it right to wash the apostles’ feet, so that, since the Lord is like this among his servants, he might teach by his own example what a fellow servant ought to be among his equals.

It is no wonder that he showed himself like this among men who obeyed him, when he could put up with Judas to the very end with a long patience — could take food with his enemy, could know the enemy in his own household and not point him out openly, and not refuse the traitor’s kiss. And then, in his bearing with the Jews, what steadiness, what patience: winning unbelievers over to faith by persuasion, calming the ungrateful by giving way, answering those who contradicted him gently, putting up with the proud without harshness, giving ground to persecutors humbly, wanting to gather in the very men who killed the prophets and were always in rebellion against God — right up to the hour of his cross and his suffering.

And in that suffering itself and on the cross, before they had come to the cruelty of death and the shedding of blood — what shameful insults he listened to patiently, what mocking abuse he put up with! He took the spit of men who insulted him, when a little while before he had made eyes for a blind man with his own spit. He in whose name the devil and the devil’s angels are now whipped by his servants was himself whipped. He was crowned with thorns, who crowns martyrs with flowers that never fade. He was struck in the face with the palms of men’s hands, who gives the true palm to those who win. He was stripped of his earthly clothes, who clothes others in the garment of immortality. He was fed gall, who gave heavenly food. He was given vinegar to drink, who appointed the cup of salvation. [p]

That guiltless one, that just one — no, the one who is innocence itself and justice itself — is counted among criminals, and truth is crushed under false witnesses. The one who is to judge is judged, and the Word of God is led away in silence to the slaughter. And at the Lord’s cross the stars are thrown into confusion, the elements are shaken, the earth quakes, night shuts out the day, and the sun withdraws his rays and his eyes so as not to be made to look at the crime of the Jews — and he does not speak, is not moved, does not declare his majesty even in that suffering of his. To the very end everything is carried through, steadily and without a break, so that in Christ a full and complete patience might be finished.

And after all this he still receives the men who murdered him, if they will turn and come to him. With a patience that saves, generous as he is in preserving people, he closes his church to no one. Those enemies, those blasphemers, those who were always hostile to his name — if they repent of their sin, if they own the crime they committed, he receives them, not only to the pardon of their sin but to the reward of the heavenly kingdom. What could be called more patient than this, what more merciful? Even the man who shed Christ’s blood is brought to life by Christ’s blood. Such, and so great, is Christ’s patience; and if it had not been such and so great, the church would never have had Paul as an apostle. [r]

But if we too, dear brothers, are in Christ; if we put him on; if he is the way of our salvation — then we who follow Christ in the footsteps of salvation should walk by Christ’s example, as the apostle John instructs us when he says: “Whoever says he remains in Christ ought himself to walk as Christ walked.” Peter too, on whom the church was founded by the Lord’s own gracious choice, lays it down in his letter and says: “Christ suffered for us, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He did no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth. When he was insulted, he did not insult back; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but handed himself over to the one who judged him unjustly.” [s]

In fact we find that the patriarchs and the prophets, and all the righteous men who in their earlier likeness carried the figure of Christ, watched over nothing more carefully, in all the praise of their virtues, than this: that they should keep patience with a strong and steady calm. So Abel, who first began and consecrated the beginning of martyrdom and the suffering of a righteous man, does not resist or struggle against the brother who kills him, but is killed patiently, in lowliness and gentleness. So Abraham, who believed God and first of all laid down the root and foundation of faith, when he is tested about his son does not hesitate or hold back, but obeys God’s commands with all the patience of devotion. And Isaac, marked out beforehand as the likeness of the Lord’s sacrifice, is found patient when his father brings him to be offered. And Jacob, driven out of his own country by his brother, goes away patiently — and afterward, with greater patience still, humbly wins that brother back into harmony with gifts to make peace, when the man had grown even more godless and more set on persecuting him. [u]

Joseph, sold and sent away by his brothers, not only pardons them patiently but even gives them grain freely and generously when they come to him. Moses is looked down on again and again by an ungrateful and faithless people, and nearly stoned; and still he pleads with the Lord for those same people, gently and patiently. But in David — from whom, as to the flesh, Christ’s birth comes — how great and astonishing and Christian the patience is! Again and again it lay in his power to kill King Saul, who was hunting him and wanting to kill him; and he chose instead to save the man when he had been put into his hands and given up to him. He did not pay his enemy back, but did the very opposite: he avenged him when he had been killed.

In the end, so many prophets were killed, so many martyrs were honored with glorious deaths — and all of them reached the crowns of heaven by the praise of patience. For the crown that belongs to sorrows and sufferings cannot be received unless patience in sorrow and suffering comes first.

But so that it may be known still more plainly and fully, dear brothers, how useful and how necessary patience is, think about the judgment of God that Adam received at the very beginning of the world and of the human race, when he forgot the command and broke the law he had been given. Then we will know how patient we ought to be in this life, born as we are into a state in which we labor here with hardships and struggles. For he says: “Because you have listened to your wife’s voice and have eaten from the tree — the one tree I had charged you not to eat from — cursed shall the ground be in all your works. In sorrow and in groaning you shall eat of it all the days of your life. It shall put out thorns and thistles for you, and you shall eat what the field grows. In the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread, until you return to the ground you were taken from; for you are dust, and to dust you shall go.” We are all tied and bound by the chain of that sentence, until the debt of death is settled and we go out of this life. Of necessity we must be in sorrow and groaning all the days of our life; of necessity we must eat our bread with sweat and hard work. [w]

So every one of us, when he is born and taken in at the inn of this world, begins with tears. He still understands nothing and knows nothing at all, and yet at that very first birth he knows nothing to do but cry. By a kind of natural foresight the untaught soul mourns the anxieties and the labors of this mortal life, and from the beginning bears witness by its wailing and groaning to the storms of the world it is entering. For as long as life lasts, the sweat of the brow and hard work are the terms on which we live. [y]

And there is no comfort to be supplied to people who sweat and toil except patience. In this world that comfort is fitting and necessary for everyone, but it is especially so for us, who are shaken harder by the devil’s siege — who stand daily on the battlefield and are worn out by the wrestling of an old and skillful enemy. Besides the many different and unending battles of temptations, we must also, in the contest of persecutions, leave behind the property we inherited, go to prison, wear chains, spend our lives, face the sword, the wild beasts, fire, crucifixion — every kind of torture and penalty there is — all of it to be endured in the faith and the courage of patience. The Lord himself teaches us so and says: “I have said these things to you so that in me you might have peace. In the world you will have trouble; but be confident, for I have overcome the world.” And if we, who have renounced the devil and the world, suffer the troubles and the injuries of the devil and the world more often and more violently than others do, how much more ought we to keep patience, so that with patience as our helper and ally we may bear everything that is done to harm us.