On Patience 7

In this chief precept, by which not even deserved evil-doing is permitted, the whole discipline of patience is summed up. Now, as we run through the causes of impatience, the other precepts too will answer in their places. If the mind is stirred by loss of property, it is admonished almost everywhere in the Lord's Scriptures to despise the world; and there is no greater exhortation to contempt of money than that the Lord himself is found in no riches. He always justifies the poor and condemns the rich beforehand. So he has provided in advance, for patience in losses, a disdain for wealth, showing by his rejection of riches that damages to them too are not to be counted. What, then, we have no need at all to seek, because the Lord did not seek it either, we ought to bear without distress when it is cut down or even taken away. The Spirit of the Lord has declared through the apostle that covetousness is the root of all evils. Let us not interpret it as consisting only in desire for what is another's; for even what seems ours is another's, since nothing is ours, because all things are God's, whose we ourselves are too. So if, when we have suffered a loss, we feel it impatiently, grieving for what is lost of what was not ours, we will be found akin to covetousness. We seek what is another's when we bear the loss of what is another's with distress. He who is stirred by impatience at a loss, putting earthly things before heavenly, sins directly against God; for he shakes the spirit he received from the Lord for the sake of a worldly thing. Let us gladly lose earthly things, then, so as to keep heavenly ones. Let the whole world perish, so long as I gain patience. Now, one who has not resolved to bear steadfastly some small loss, whether by theft or force or even his own carelessness, I doubt could easily or heartily lay hand on his own property in the cause of almsgiving. For who, altogether unable to bear being cut by another, himself draws the knife through his own body? Patience in losses is a training in giving and sharing. He does not mind giving who does not fear losing. Otherwise, how will one who has two tunics give one of them to the naked, unless he is the same man who can offer his cloak too to one who takes away his tunic? How will we make friends for ourselves out of mammon if we love it so much that we do not endure its loss? We will perish with what is lost, we who find here where we have to lose. It is the Gentiles' way to meet all losses with impatience, since they perhaps put money before the soul; for they do this when, from desire of gain, they carry on the risky ventures of commerce at sea; when, for money's sake, they do not hesitate to undertake in the forum too things in which there is nothing to be feared from condemnation; when, finally, they hire themselves out to the gladiatorial school and to the camps; when, like beasts forgetful of themselves, they commit robbery on the highways. But we, according to the difference that separates us from them, ought to lay down not the soul for money but money for the soul, whether freely in giving or patiently in losing.