Patience

Plant in the garden of your memory, the tree of the holy Cross; it produces a very efficacious medicine against all the suggestions of the devil. Of this most noble and fertile tree, the root is humility and poverty; the bark, labor and penitence; the branches, mercy and justice; the leaves, true honor and modesty; the scent, sobriety and abstinence; the beauty, chastity and obedience; the splendor, right faith and firm hope; the strength, magnanimity and patience; the length, long-suffering and perseverance; the breadth, benignity and concord; the height, charity and wisdom; the sweetness, love and joy; the fruit, salvation and life eternal.

Who cares for Caesar when he is dead? But what more efficacious than Christ when he died? He was most practical when he seemed to do nothing. In patience he reigned and triumphed; he subjected the greatest enemies to himself, Satan, and death, and the wrath of God, and all. In the same manner all things are ours, the worst things that befell God’s children: death, and afflictions, and persecutions. There is a kingdom of patience set up in them. The Spirit of God subdues all base fears in us, and a child of God never more triumphs than in his greatest troubles.

Labor together with one another, compete together, run together, suffer together, die together, rise up together, as God’s managers and assistants and servants. Please the one whom you serve as a soldier, from whom you also receive wages. Let none of you be found a deserter. Keep your baptism as weaponry, your faith as a helmet, your love as a spear, your endurance as a full set of armor. Let your works be your war-time deposits, so that you may receive your deserved savings. Be patient, therefore, with one another, in gentleness, as God is with you.