VII — PERSEVERANCE

Presence of God. — May your grace, O God, make me persevering unto the end.

Meditation

To make us saints it is not enough to be courageous, just, patient, and to possess all the other virtues for a few days, nor even for a few years; we must endure in this exercise to the end, without yielding to weariness, discouragement, or softness. Here is the crucial point, because, as St. Thomas says, “to apply oneself for a long time to something difficult — and virtue is almost always difficult — constitutes a special difficulty” (II-II, q. 137, a. 1). Only by overcoming this difficulty can we reach perfection.

We are not angels, we are men. The angel, pure spirit, is by nature stable: once he has made a decision, he remains fixed in it. Not so with us, who, being composed of spirit and matter, undergo the consequences of matter’s mutability and fluctuations. As stability is characteristic of spirit, so volatility is characteristic of matter; this is why it is so difficult for us to be perfectly constant in good.

Even after making good resolutions in spirit, we always feel the weight of the sensible part, which recoils from sustained and strenuous effort and therefore tries to free itself from it, or at least reduce it to a minimum. Our body is subject to fatigue; sensibility gives rise to impressions and disturbances. All this occasions continual ups and downs: the very things that just before enthused us suddenly become unpleasant and tedious, so that it seems almost impossible to bear them. This is our condition on earth, a condition from which no man can escape.

Yet God still calls us to holiness; and since holiness requires continuous exercise of virtue, He — who never asks anything impossible — has remedied the instability of our nature by infusing into us the virtue of perseverance, whose particular object is endurance in effort. If by nature we are unstable, with grace’s help we can become persevering.

2 — There are two forms of perseverance. The first is so perfect that it shows no fissure: always straight, always equal to itself, even in the most difficult and unforeseen circumstances. This is perseverance of heroic virtue, of souls arrived at transforming union and therefore habitually living under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. A beautiful goal to which we can and must aspire, but which we cannot reach by exercise of virtue alone, because only the habitual intervention of the Holy Spirit’s gifts can heal our natural instability to the very depths.

The second form belongs to fervent souls and also to perfect souls who do not yet enjoy the Holy Spirit’s habitual motion; therefore it presents fissures, more or less slight according to greater or lesser perfection. In this case continuity of perseverance does not consist in remaining perfectly stable in good, but rather in incessantly beginning again as soon as one notices having failed in something.

Sometimes one moment of inattention, an unforeseen event, a little fatigue, or emotional disturbance is enough to make us fall into a fault we had sincerely proposed to avoid at all costs — and we are down! Yet this is not a reason for discouragement or sadness; it is instead a reason for humility, recognizing our weakness, and for invoking God’s help more insistently so as to rise at once and begin again. Given the mobility of human nature, our perseverance consists practically in a continual beginning again.

This is the perseverance all of us must surely attain, because it depends on our good will, in the sense that God has infused this virtue in us and gives us, moment by moment, sufficient grace to practice it. It is not in our power to free ourselves from natural instability, and so we cannot avoid every slowing in good, every negligence, weakness, or fault; but it is in our power to recover immediately as soon as we notice we have put one foot wrong. This is the perseverance God asks of us; and when we are faithful to practice it, always ready to rise after any fall, God Himself will crown our efforts by granting us the supreme grace of final perseverance.

Colloquy

“O Lord, I shall certainly be saved if I persevere to the end; but this perseverance must be virtuous in order to merit salvation. If the virtue that saves me comes to me, it is You who make me persevere until I attain salvation.

“Behold, now I am still in battle: outward battle with false virtuous persons, inward battle with my own concupiscences. Considering how many little miseries I fall into every day, if only in thoughts and words, I see that their number is very great, and that from this great number of little things a large heap is formed. Unhappy me! Who will deliver me from this body of death? You will deliver me, O Lord, by your grace through Jesus Christ your Son and our Lord.

“In the toil of this warfare, then, I lift my gaze to your grace, and in the heat and aridity I have already begun to feel, I invoke your life-giving shade.

“Assist me, Lord Jesus, by repeating to me: ‘Do not grow weary on the narrow way: I passed through it before you; I am the way itself; I am your guide. I take up the one I lead, and I lead him unto Myself’” (St. Augustine).

“Grant me, O eternal God, the virtue of perseverance, without which no one can please You or be acceptable to You. This virtue brings to the soul abundance of charity and the fruit of every labor. Oh, how blessed I shall be if You, Lord, give me this virtue, for already here below it will make me taste a pledge of eternal life. But your light shows me that I cannot reach this without much suffering, because this life does not pass without toil; and whoever would flee toil would flee the fruit of holy perseverance” (St. Catherine of Siena).