Common Errors Concerning Patience

A word weakened by everyday use

Few Christian words have faded as much as this one. In ordinary language, “to be patient” means roughly “to take things without flinching”: to wait one's turn, to put up with a delay, not to get annoyed. Patience becomes a matter of strong nerves or a placid temperament — at best good manners, at worst softness. “To take one's trouble patiently” already sounds like a half-defeat: one yields ground for lack of anything better.

This reduction is attractive because it is convenient: it spares us from seeing patience as a battle. But the Latin word patientia comes from pati, “to suffer, to bear” — the same root as the Passion of Christ. Patience is not the art of avoiding suffering: it is the art of bearing it without breaking, while keeping one's course toward the good. Far from being passive, it demands more strength than outburst, which costs nothing.

Patience, endurance, longanimity: three realities under one word

Much of the confusion comes from the fact that English covers with a single word what tradition carefully distinguished. Classical theology, following Saint Thomas, groups around fortitude several neighbouring virtues: patience bears present evils without letting itself be troubled by sorrow; longanimity (from Latin longanimitas, “greatness of soul over time”) waits a long time for a delayed good without becoming discouraged; perseverance and constancy hold firm in the good that has been begun until the end^[4].

The biblical languages also marked the distinction. New Testament Greek uses hypomonē (ὑπομονή), endurance that holds firm under trial, and makrothymia (μακροθυμία), longanimity that long restrains anger and bears patiently with people. When Saint Paul lists makrothymia among the “fruits of the Spirit” (Gal 5:22)^[5], he is not speaking of a character trait, but of an effect of God within us. Keeping these distinctions in mind already prevents half the misunderstandings: we do not expect from patience what belongs to hope, and we do not reproach an impatient person for what is merely a lack of longanimity.

Reminder: what patience really is

Before correcting errors, we need a compass. The reference definition, taken up throughout the Middle Ages and by Saint Thomas, comes from Saint Augustine's treatise De patientia:

“The patience of man, that which is upright, praiseworthy and worthy of the name of virtue, is that by which we bear evils with an even soul, without letting ourselves be troubled by sorrow, lest an uneven soul abandon the goods by which we attain to better things.” — Saint Augustine, De patientia, II, 2^[6]

Three decisive traits follow. First, patience presupposes a real evil to be borne — trial, contradiction, slowness — not an imaginary evil; it makes sense only in adversity. Second, its heart is the “even soul” (aequo animo): not the absence of suffering, but inner balance maintained despite it. Finally, it is ordered to a good: we bear the lesser evil “in order to attain better” goods — patience always looks beyond the pain it endures. Remove any one of these traits, and you obtain a counterfeit: an evil one undergoes without bearing it (resignation), a calm without love (insensitivity), or an endurance that leads nowhere (stubbornness). For the full nature of the virtue and the means to make it grow, see How to Grow in Patience; it is not repeated here.

Error — “Patience is passivity”

This is the mother error. Spontaneously, we picture the patient person as one who “does nothing”: he waits, he puts up with things, he lets them pass. Patience would become a polite abdication, a resignation before the inevitable — close to fatalism: “what is the point of fighting, it is what it is.” The error is attractive because patience does indeed involve a measure of acceptance, and because it is comfortable to baptise as “patience” our laziness to act.

Why it is false. Patience is not inertia: it is an active virtue, which keeps the soul oriented toward the good under the shock of trial. Saint Thomas says it with precision: patience does not produce the good by itself, but it “removes the obstacle” — sorrow and discouragement — that would prevent us from producing and pursuing it^[7]. It does not say “do nothing,” it says “do not give up.” Far from putting action to sleep, it is what makes action lasting: the farmer does not fold his arms, he keeps cultivating “as he patiently waits for the precious fruit of the earth” (Jas 5:7)^[8]. The opposite of patience is therefore not effort, but the turmoil that makes us drop everything.

What the Church says. Patience is a part of fortitude, that cardinal virtue which “ensures firmness and constancy in the pursuit of the good in difficulties”^[9]. A virtue of firmness cannot be softness. The fatalist endures the future; the patient person holds firm for a good he wants to attain. That is the whole meaning of Christ's words: “By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Lk 21:19)^[10] — not “you will undergo your fate,” but “you will possess your souls.”

Error — “To be patient is to feel nothing”

A very widespread variant: the truly patient person would be one who feels nothing, the unshakeable person whom nothing touches. The virtue is then confused with a kind of anaesthesia of the heart — the ideal of the Stoic sage, impassive because insensitive. The error is attractive because it seems heroic, and because we spontaneously admire those who “do not let themselves be thrown off.”

Why it is false. The Christian model of patience is not the impassive sage, but Christ on the Cross — who wept over Lazarus, shuddered before death, sweated blood in Gethsemane. He was not Stoic: he was patient. He felt evil with his whole flesh, and bore it without letting himself be torn from the good. As early as the second century, Saint Cyprian refused to equate Christian patience with that of the philosophers, who “please themselves, and for that very reason displease God”^[11]. To suppress sensitivity is not to conquer suffering: it is to refuse to bear it. Patience presupposes that we truly suffer; otherwise there is nothing to bear.

What the Church says. Saint Francis de Sales puts it bluntly: patience does not consist in bearing an imagined suffering, but the precise, humiliating suffering that God actually sends.

“We must have patience, not only to be sick, but to be sick with the sickness God wills, in the place He wills, and among the people He wills, and with the discomforts He wills.” — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, III, 3^[12]

We do not “choose” our cross; we feel it. Patience begins precisely where insensitivity would like to pretend it does not exist.

Error — “Patience is a virtue for the weak”

In a culture that prizes reactivity, repartee and “character,” patience readily passes for a virtue of soft temperaments: the one who is patient would not dare to assert himself, for lack of strength or courage. The error is attractive because it flatters aggressiveness by disguising it as energy, and because outburst easily puts on airs of virility.

Why it is false. It is exactly the opposite. Losing one's temper requires no strength: it is to yield to passion, the easiest movement in the world. Holding firm under insult without retaliating, keeping one's soul even when everything pushes one to explode — that demands rare self-mastery. For this reason tradition places patience among the parts of fortitude, alongside martyrdom: if dying for God is its supreme act, patience is its daily exercise, which consists in “bearing without breaking”^[13]. The biblical proverb said it long ago: “Better a patient man than a warrior, one who controls himself than one who takes a city” (Prov 16:32).

What the Church says. Saint Catherine of Siena makes patience the sign of true love, because it is what holds firm when everything gives way:

“Patience is not conquered, but conquers the world… It is the marrow of charity, and it bears witness that the soul truly loves.” — Saint Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue of Divine Providence^[14]

A virtue that “conquers the world” is not a weakness: it is the most tenacious form of courage.

Error — “To be patient is never to get angry”

We often imagine the patient person as one who never gets angry: every instance of anger would, by definition, be a failure of patience. Hence a frequent confusion between the virtue and repression: to be patient, one would have to extinguish all indignation within oneself. The error is attractive because most of our fits of anger are indeed disordered, and we are right to be wary of them.

Why it is false. Not every instance of anger is a sin. Saint Thomas teaches that there exists a righteous anger, a movement of the soul against a real injustice; what is bad is immoderate anger, or anger directed at the wrong target, or anger that lingers and turns into resentment^[15]. Christ himself was indignant, drove the merchants from the Temple, dealt harshly with hypocrisy. Patience therefore does not suppress indignation before evil: it governs it. It prevents anger from becoming blind, vindictive or bitter — but it does not forbid defending truth, correcting, saying no. To equate patience with the total absence of anger is to ask the Christian to be indifferent to evil, which is not a virtue.

What the Church says. Scripture itself distinguishes the two: “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Eph 4:26). Patience is precisely what prevents the sun from going down on anger — not by stifling it, but by preventing it from lasting and turning into hatred. The twin virtue that disarms anger is gentleness: see What the Saints Say About Gentleness.

Error — “Patience means putting up with everything, even injustice”

A serious and frequent error: to make patience a universal submission. The patient person would be one who takes everything without saying anything — including injustice, abuse, contempt — to the point of becoming a “doormat.” Patience is then invoked in order never to react, never to correct, never to resist. The error is attractive because it has the appearance of humility and peace, and because it is more convenient to endure everything than to discern.

Why it is false. Patience bears the evil we suffer; it never approves the evil we see. Enduring a personal offence is a virtue; letting injustice happen without doing anything, when we can prevent it, is cowardice. Patience has never exempted anyone from fraternal correction, from defending the oppressed, or from saying “no” to sin: the Christ who was patient before his own judges is the same who overturned the tables of the money changers. Saint Thomas clearly distinguishes what must be borne from what must be fought; and one can even sin “by lack of anger” when one remains unmoved before an evil that ought to be denounced^[16]. A “patience” that covers injustice is not the virtue: it is its caricature.

What the Church says. The Imitation of Christ draws the right boundary: to bear with patience what we cannot correct, without confusing that with abdication before what we ought to correct.

“What a man cannot amend in himself or in others, he must bear with patience, until God ordains otherwise.” — Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, ch. 16^[17]

The whole art lies in distinguishing what depends on us — to be corrected — from what does not — to be borne. Patience does not abolish the duty of justice; it makes it possible without bitterness.

Error — “Patience means swallowing your anger and keeping quiet”

A more subtle counterfeit, particularly ensnaring for pious souls: patience would consist in keeping everything inside. One says nothing, shows nothing — but one seethes, ruminates, keeps score. Beneath a smooth surface, resentment is at work. The error is attractive because outward silence looks deceptively like virtue.

Why it is false. Saint Gregory the Great unmasked this false patience with formidable finesse. In his Pastoral Rule, teaching how to admonish the impatient and the patient separately, he observes that it often happens that certain people, at the very moment of trial or insult, feel no resentment and seem to keep innocence of heart — but that when they later recall what they endured, they inflame themselves with the fire of resentment, seek reasons for revenge, and turn into malice the meekness they had shown in bearing it:

“It often happens that patient people, at the very moment when they suffer trials or hear insults, feel no resentment and thus keep innocence of heart; but when after a while they recall to mind those very things they endured, they inflame themselves with the fire of resentment, seek reasons for revenge and, in going back over them, turn into malice the meekness they had in bearing it.” — Saint Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule, Book III, ch. 9^[18]

Such patience is worse than frank impatience, for it adds deceit to the wound: it claims the merit of virtue without having its heart. True patience does not repress anger: it disarms it, by truly forgiving. Silence through gritted teeth is not the peace of the even soul; it is a time bomb.

What the Church says. True patience is inseparable from forgiveness. Saint Cyprian recalled this by showing Christ healing the ear of the man who arrests him and praying for his executioners: Christian patience “we have in common with God,” whose mercy it imitates^[19]. To be patient without forgiving is not to be patient: it is to defer vengeance. The virtue is attained only when the heart, and not merely the mouth, has made peace.

Error — “You are born patient or impatient”

Many regard patience as a matter of temperament: there would be calm natures and nervous natures, some gifted for patience, others doomed to lose their temper. “I cannot help it, I am just not patient.” The error is attractive because it corresponds to a measure of psychological truth — temperaments do exist — and because it conveniently removes guilt.

Why it is false. Temperament is a starting point, not a destiny. Patience is not a character trait but a virtue, that is, a disposition acquired and strengthened through practice and grace. A lively temperament can become greatly patient; a placid person may have no supernatural patience at all, only nonchalance. Above all, perfect patience is a gift of God: Saint Thomas affirms that “there can be no true patience without grace,” for to bear evils for the sake of God presupposes preferring Him to all things, which only charity can give^[20]. To say “I am not patient” as one would say “I have brown hair” is to confuse a datum of nature with a refusal to cultivate it.

What the Church says. Patience is numbered among the fruits of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22), those “perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as first fruits of eternal glory”^[21]. It is therefore neither purely innate nor purely achieved: it is asked for and received, as much as it is worked at. The concrete path of this growth is the subject of How to Grow in Patience.

Error — “Patience is only needed in great trials”

We readily reserve patience for heroic situations: illness, bereavement, persecution. The rest of the time — everyday annoyances, delays, difficult personalities — would belong to mere good humour, not virtue. The error is attractive because patience does indeed shine most strikingly in great sorrows, which makes us forget that it is played out chiefly elsewhere.

Why it is false. Patience is above all the virtue of everyday life: it is not rare great crosses that form the soul, but the thousand small contradictions of each day, borne out of love. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux made this the heart of her “little way”: not spectacular mortifications, but the tiny opportunity — putting up with an unpleasant sister, not answering back, smiling at the one who irritates you. The episode of old Sister Saint-Pierre, infirm and difficult, whom she led to the refectory each evening despite rebuffs, is the model:

“As I was clumsy, I did not succeed in pleasing her; yet I would have liked to prove in a thousand ways the love I bore her, since it was Jesus whom I served in her.” — Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Story of a Soul, Manuscript C^[22]

What the Church says. “The greatness of the saints is patience,” said the monastic tradition: one does not become a saint by a brilliant stroke, but by long fidelity in small things. To reserve patience for great occasions is to condemn oneself not to have it when they come: we hold firm in the storm only because we have practised in fair weather.

Error — “Being patient with yourself means indulging your weaknesses”

Patience toward oneself is misunderstood on both sides. Some confuse it with laxity: to be patient with oneself would be to excuse one's faults, to renounce high standards, to indulge one's defects. Others, for fear of such softness, refuse themselves all patience and wear themselves out with every relapse. In both cases, the error comes from opposing patience and demandingness.

Why it is false. True patience toward oneself is not complacency: it is perseverance without discouragement. It does not say “it does not matter,” it says “begin again.” Saint Francis de Sales, a master on this point, gave its clearest formula:

“Have patience with everyone, but chiefly with yourself: do not be troubled about your imperfections, and always have the courage to rise up again… There is no better means to advance well in the spiritual life than always to begin again.” — Saint Francis de Sales, spiritual letter^[23]

Impatience with oneself, moreover, is not a virtue: it is often self-love disguised as humility, which seeks less to be healed than to see itself as perfect^[24]. The saint therefore invites us to “bear with patience the delay of our perfection”^[25]: God is not in a hurry, and the soul that claims to sanctify itself in three months is first mistaken about itself.

What the Church says. This patience is the other side of humility and trust: to accept being an unfinished work, without discouragement or complacency. It follows the same logic as the spirituality of abandonment — to desire the good fervently, and to bear peacefully the time it takes to come.

Like every virtue, patience stands between two opposite deviations. Tradition calls them impatience, which sins by defect, and false patience, which has the appearance without the heart. To recognise them is already to better situate the virtue.

Impatience — when sorrow makes us give up

Impatience is not merely nervousness: it is, properly speaking, the inability to bear present evil. Under the weight of sorrow, frustration or waiting, the soul becomes troubled, loses its bearings, and ends by abandoning the good it held — prayer, charity, resolution, peace. That is why Saint Augustine defines patience by the “even soul”: its contrary is the “uneven soul” which, shaken by pain, lets go^[26]. The impatient person no longer possesses himself; he is carried away by his moods. That is exactly what Christ corrects when he promises that “by patience” we “possess our souls” (Lk 21:19).

False patience — enduring without charity

At the opposite extreme, there is an endurance that is not a virtue. Saint Augustine was the first to unmask it: the thief who endures torture rather than betray his accomplices, the miser who endures a thousand privations out of avarice, the ambitious man who swallows humiliations out of calculation — all “bear” great evils, but none is patient in the true sense, for their endurance is not rooted in love of God, but in covetousness^[27]. What makes patience is therefore not the quantity of evil borne, but the motive for which it is borne.

“Where there is no true charity, there is no true patience.” — after Saint Augustine, De patientia^[28]

To this false patience of covetousness, Saint Gregory adds that of concealed resentment — bearing in appearance in order to better ruminate in secret^[29]. In both cases, appearances deceive: only the heart, and the motive that dwells there, decides whether we are in the presence of virtue or its counterfeit.

Error — “Patience is just a self-control technique”

A final misunderstanding, the most modern: patience would be a skill, a matter of stress management, breathing and self-control — something acquired by method, as one builds a muscle. The error is attractive because it is partly true: self-mastery can be worked on, and techniques help. But it confuses the fuel and the flame.

Why it is false. Self-mastery without love is not yet the virtue of patience: it is, at best, a discipline; at worst, the pride of one who “will not be had.” Christian patience draws its strength not from willpower alone, but from charity — from the love of God “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5)^[30]. That is why Saint Paul, listing the traits of love, puts patience first:

“Love is patient; love is kind.” — First Letter to the Corinthians 13:4^[31]

Patience is “charity holding firm.” And its model is not a Stoic posture, but the Cross: “Our Lord saved us by suffering and enduring”^[32], and it is by uniting itself to his patience that the Christian receives his own. Remove charity, and only tension remains; give charity, and endurance becomes love.

What the Church says. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22; CCC § 1832)^[33], not a performance of the will. It is born of trial undergone with faith: “affliction produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope” (Rom 5:3-4)^[34]. Technique can help nature; only grace makes the virtue.

The table below summarises the main misunderstandings and the Catholic truth that answers them. The left column gives the error in its common formulation; the middle column, why it is false; the right column, the doctrinal landmark that corrects it.

Many misunderstandings stem from confusing patience with its neighbouring virtues. It is surrounded by sisters that resemble it — fortitude, perseverance, hope, gentleness — but are not to be conflated with it.

Error — “To be patient is just to wait”

Patience is often reduced to waiting: to be patient would be to let time pass until the good arrives. But waiting for a good to come properly belongs to longanimity and hope, not to patience, which bears first a present evil. The two go together — “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation” (Rom 12:12)^[35] — but they are not the same: hope looks to the promised good, patience bears the present pain. That is why “you need endurance” (Heb 10:36)^[36]: not to kill time, but to go through trial without letting go of the promise. On the side of waiting, see Common Errors Concerning Hope and What the Saints Say About Perseverance.

Error — “Patience is gentleness”

Patience is also confused with gentleness, because both soothe and the saints practise them together. But they do not have the same object: patience bears the evil that comes to us (trial, contradiction); gentleness moderates the movement of anger that rises within us. One can be patient without gentleness — bearing things through gritted teeth — and gentleness without patience would soon turn to softness. Together they complement each other: gentleness prevents anger from arising, patience prevents sorrow from making us give up. On the twin virtue, see What the Saints Say About Gentleness and What the Saints Say About Fortitude, the cardinal virtue of which patience is a part.

All these misunderstandings have a common root: patience has been detached from what founds it — at times from its object, the good to be attained, at times from its heart, the “even soul,” at times from its source, charity. Restored to itself, patience is neither passivity, nor insensitivity, nor weakness, nor complacency: it is the strength of love that endures in trial, “the root and guardian of all the virtues”^[37].

Between impatience that drops everything under the weight of sorrow and false patience that endures without loving, it holds the ridge path: to bear the present evil with an even soul, out of love, and toward a greater good. That is what Christ promises his persecuted disciples — “By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Lk 21:19) — and what Saint Teresa of Avila's most famous saying, found in her breviary at her death, sums up:

“Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you. All things pass; God does not change. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing: God alone suffices.” — Saint Teresa of Avila, Nada te turbe^[38]

“Patience obtains all things” (la paciencia todo lo alcanza): not because it would be a superhuman strength, but because it is charity that does not give up. Learning to recognise counterfeit coins already disposes us to receive true gold: for the saints' voice on this virtue, see What the Saints Say About Patience; for the path of its growth, see How to Grow in Patience.

• What the Saints Say About Patience — the commented anthology of the great sayings of saints and mystics on patience, from Saint Augustine to Padre Pio.
• How to Grow in Patience — the practical path: concrete means, steps and exercises for making this virtue grow day by day.
• What the Saints Say About Gentleness — the twin virtue, which disarms anger and accompanies patience.
• What the Saints Say About Fortitude — the cardinal virtue of which patience is a part, according to Saint Thomas.
• Common Errors Concerning Charity — the twin article in the same series, on the misunderstandings of the greatest of the virtues.