Why is patience so important in our lives?


Patience is the virtue that helps us a lot in our spiritual growth.

Patience must extend to everything that God's providence sends us in our spiritual life. Through patience, a man becomes a good fighter and ascetic, and often achieves more spiritual victories than another through his voluntary asceticism. Job was a voluntary ascetic when he lived in piety and rejoiced in his children; he did not forget to pray to God for them every day, to divert God's righteous judgment from their involuntary mistakes.

He performed good deeds, was a father to all orphans, and a protector of widows. He honored God in the days of his abundance, and thereby he greatly pleased his Creator. But he also became an involuntary ascetic when, under the blows of the trials sent upon him by God, he lost everything: lands, wealth, livestock, servants, children, even his health, and yet, he did not grumble, but uttered the unforgettable words: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it is done: blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21).

Voluntary necessity showed Job to be a man of great piety, but involuntary, persistent asceticism, in the endurance of the heaviest blows that befell him, immortalized his name and glorified his virtue throughout the world. And so, if we want to keep our spiritual life at the proper height in order to save ourselves and our fellow men, it is necessary, without delay, to increase in the most quickly victorious virtue: patience.

Archimandrite Seraphim Alexiev

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