Patience
Thoughts on the Patient Endurance of Sorrows and Sufferings
TRULY A PATIENT MAN [continued]
...We are quick enough at perceiving and weighing what we suffer from others, but we mind not what others suffer from us.
He that would well and duly weigh his own deeds would have no room to judge hardly of others.
He hath great tranquility and peace of heart, that neither regardeth praises nor dispraises; and he shall soon be pacified and content that hath a good conscience.
Thou art not the better because thou art praised, nor worse if thou be dispraised, for as thou art, thou art; and whatsover is said of thee, thou art no better than almighty God, Who is the searcher of man's heart, will witness thee to be. If thou behold what thou art inwardly, thou shalt not care much what the world speaketh of thee outwardly. Man seeth the face, but God beholdeth the heart. Man beholdeth the deed, but God beholdeth the intent of the deed. It is a great token of a meek heart for a man ever to do well, and yet to think himself to have done but little. And it is a great sign of cleanness of life and of inward trust in God, when a man taketh not his comfort of any creature.
Very quickly must thou be gone from hence, see, then, how matters stand with thee; a man is here today, and tomorrow he is vanished.
(I Mach. ii. 63).
And when he is taken away from the sight, he is quickly also out of mind.
Oh, the dullness and hardness of man's heart, which only thinks of what is present, and looks not forward to things to come.
Thou oughtest in every action and thought so to order thyself as if thou wert immediately to die.
Blessed is he that has always the hour of death before his eyes and every day disposes himself to die (Ecclus. vii. 40).
If thou hast at any time seen a man die, think that thou must also pass the same away.
-The Imitation.
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Compiled and Edited by Rev. F. X. Lasance
Author of "My Prayerbook," etc.
1937, Benziger Brothers
Printers to the Holy Apostolic See
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