Pints With Aquinas - Good Things Come to Those Who Wait | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: April 6, 2024

Father Gregory Pine talks about patience in suffering. How do we cultivate patience? How is it related to courage and fortitude? 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd  

Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar in the province of St. Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and I work for the Thomistic Institute. And this is Pines with Aquinas. You have probably heard it said that good things come to those who wait. But I think many of us find it difficult to be patient because we don't necessarily see the sense in it. Or we find it hard to derive meaning or purpose in the midst of our pain and suffering. So I want to talk a little bit about patience, how we can profit from it, how we can cultivate

it as a virtue, and ultimately how we can see it through to its term. Here we go. So I've talked about patience before, specifically under the rubric of courage or bravery or perhaps you've heard it called fortitude if you're super stylish. Basically when talking about this virtue, we divide it between the parts of the virtue which help you to kind of get after it or attack and then the parts of the virtue which help you to bear it up or endure. And in the latter category, we put the virtue of patience.

Okay, so patience helps us to hold fast to what is good, or maybe if you're kind of like into sweet philosophical or theological descriptions, it preserves or conserves the rule of reason, despite the experience or in the midst of the experience of sadness. Here I think St. Thomas describes two of the main obstacles to the good life that would be sadness and then duration or length. So when we think about like our lives and

we think about the fact that they're hard, usually you know obviously there are things in our lives which kind of leap out of the fabric, the warp and woof as it were, but like the two kind of leap out of the fabric, the warp and woof as it were. But like the two kind of general features of life which make it to some intolerable, to some merely difficult, to others kind of bemusing, bewildering, is the fact that it's sad and that it takes a long time. Or it seems to take a long time. And so God equips us with virtues whereby to bear that up. So patience helps us to bear up against or under the weight of sadness. And then perseverance helps us to bear up

under the weight of duration or of length. So St. Thomas will observe that among all those passions, sadness or you might call it pain or you might call it whatever else, sadness is kind of most effective or it's most potent for distracting us, for dispersing us, for otherwise throwing us off track. So we need to be fortified in a special way in order to see through these human pursuits so that way we're not destroyed by them. And basically like patience boils us up less we succumb to sadness, okay? And that might mean,

you know, like pain, suffering, chagrin, disappointment, whatever you want to say. Okay, and that might mean, you know, like pain suffering chagrin disappointment, whatever you want to say and I think that Patience kind of helps us to wind our way between on the one hand an inordinate attachment to the easy way or an inordinate Attachment to comfort and on the other hand a kind of false victim spirit whereby we begin to think that we deserve These things and there's no stick which is not fit to be beat with you know That's a weird way of describing life. But there are some people who only expect sadness out of life. And there are other people who just can't bear the thought of sadness in life.

But we as human beings are meant to experience some sadness, because there are going to be sad seasons in our life. And I talked about this last week in the old Video. Sorry. Just getting out of control over here. But we're not meant to glorify it, nor are we meant to minimize it, nor are we meant to escape it. We're meant to bear it up, to live it in proportion to how it emerges organically from our lives. So patience does just that. You get various definitions of patience, patience in the Christian tradition.

Alright, struggling to speak here, Let's get back on the horse. Okay, so one author will say that patience is to tolerate evils with an even spirit, so as not to abandon goods with an evil spirit, right? So, to tolerate evils with an even spirit, so as not to abandon the good with an evil spirit. Kind of cool. Another author observes, by patience a man is said to possess his soul and that he pulls up by the roots those adverse passions by which the soul is disquieted. Right, so it's a matter of self-possession. Because if you're not able to endure sadness,

then you become in turn somewhat less human because you're not able to see yourself through the various difficulties of life and there's a kind of narrative discontinuity You're like who am I now and who am I now and who am I now? You might be thinking what are you talking about? Okay well like say you're in a conflict with one of your friends and your communication is

Not as straightforward as it once was and you're waiting on text messages and drafting new text messages and trying to figure out what You know like what means to use so as to reconcile and you just can't find any so you end up sending off like text messages too late and they're somewhat tortured in the prose and they don't actually conduce to the desired end when what's probably best in the situation is just to leave it alone right patience prepares you for that right because you possess yourself you know who you are and what you're for, and you don't rely overly much on other people to define who you are and what you're for,

and so you're free thereby to pursue the good and to abide in it. Another author will describe patience as a virtuous capacity to suffer well without relaxation in one's attachment to the good. I like that. A lot of us are looking for a certain relaxation, and maybe we will lament the fact that in our lives we have come to a point where there's little relaxation. It's just work and work and more work, or like responsibility, duty, obligation, etc. So we're like looking for relaxation, and sometimes we just want to

relax into our lives, but we realize that even if we do relax into our lives, like on a week-long retreat at a hermitage, you know, way away from anything and totally unplugged and otherwise off the grid, even still, you know, like we're not meant to become less vigilant, right? There's a kind of Christian spirit of vigilance which is proper to the disciple. It's what the Lord says to His apostles in the garden as He prepares to undergo His passion, right? So, a virtuous capacity to suffer well without relaxation and one's attachment to the good. All right, so it's a kind of perfection and tolerating adversity is a cause of honesty and usefulness, voluntary and lasting endurance of arduous or difficult things. Okay, so those are some definitions that St. Thomas

pulls into his treatment of the virtue. So, yeah, I think that like what we're talking about here, you know, given that kind of impressionistic description where we highlighted different strengths of various descriptions of the virtue itself, that what we're doing is like we're dealing with impediments, we're dealing with obstacles, we're dealing with things that come between us and the attainment of the good, one of those things is sadness and sadness is part Of life it's not meant to be wholly eradicated now Maybe there's a kind of sadness in your life Which you find utterly ungovernable or maybe there's a kind of chemical imbalance in the background or maybe it's something that needs to be

Medicated or something that you know, like you're navigating with the help of therapy or a clinician of whatever sort Okay, good Like I'm not I'm not trying to kind of distract from that or minimize that. But it's just to say, regardless of where you are at present, sadness is probably going to be part of your life. And it's not, again, to be dramatized or to be romanticized or to be whatever a size, to be made other than it is. It's just part of life and it's part of life that's to be endured, part of life to be born up,

part of life to be seen through. And like last week's episode, I talked about the various kind of remedies for sadness and those are kind of to be held in combination with this here treatment. But yeah, it just takes it takes fortitude, right? It takes patience, it takes perseverance in order to remove those obstacles, which I which might otherwise like kind of pull us off the straight path to God, who is our destiny, in whom we find full satisfaction and perfection. You know, God who will wipe away every tear from our eyes, in whom there will be no death and mourning.

So, in general, is patience the most important thing in the world? I mean, on the one hand, no. There are other virtues which are more important than it, like faith, hope, love, for instance, because they get you God. And even still, like, prudence, it's about reason in the strict sense, or justice, it's about governing relationships with other people in our operations towards them. Right? So like, patience insofar as it's allied with fortitude, it's going to be a kind of

lower grade phenomenon, but still, it's like, I mean, sadness is a realsofar as it's allied with fortitude, it's going to be a kind of lower grade phenomenon, but still, sadness is a real thing and it's a real obstacle and it needs to be taken account of and it needs to be dealt with. So when St. Thomas says, hey, patience, are we talking about the most important virtue here or something? No, okay. Because when we talk about the impediments to the good life, danger of death, that's the type of thing that can really throw you for a loop. You need bravery, courage, fortitude for that, or you know, delights of touch is what he calls them, but like what we're talking about here is food, drink, sexual intercourse. Those are things that can totally throw you for a loop because you can become easily enslaved to them or your passions can be easily worked by them. So what we're talking about with,

yeah again, with patience, it's of a kind of lower grade importance, but still you can see that it plays an integral part in our human flourishing. And then without being able to bear up under sadness is we ourselves become somehow less human or somehow ill-made, okay? So yeah, other kind of thoughts at the end there. I wanna stress the fact that to be patient doesn't mean to become a doormat.

So it's not against the nature of patience to kind of push back. So you're not supposed to just endure everything. You're not just supposed to take everything. I mean, as a Christian, you're supposed to turn the other cheek, but you're not supposed to make it such that people, if they care to, can just persecute believers or take advantage of you or treat you unjustly. You're supposed to vindicate your rights. And so anger arises in the heart so as to register that injustice so that you can go about the process of rectifying it. Right?

So to be patient often enough means like, yeah, you have somebody in your family who's sick and they're gonna be here for several months yet, and it's gonna be here for several months yet, and it's your job to take care of them, not only to take care of them, but to take care of those who love them, insofar as this is a real difficulty, right? And it's gonna strain your relationships. Like, can you bear it up?

Or, yeah, like, you signed on for this project that takes X number of months or years, and the work is drudgery. It's just brutal. It's not the type of thing that you enjoy. Maybe you're convinced as to its efficacy or as to its importance, but it needs to be seen through. Like, you need to plan for it and you need to execute it, and it's going to take

time and consistency, and that's tough, right? But you need patience for that. Or your own spiritual growth. Maybe you're in the habit of taking your own spiritual temperature and you are disappointed to find that you have not advanced as rapidly as you might have hoped at some point in your Christian life. Here we are, you know, this is it. Right? But you trust that God, who has begun a good work in you, will see it through to completion. You're praying, you're making good use of the sacraments, you're engaging in Christian friendship, you've endeavored a bit of penance in your life, you're studying the faith, etc.

So you know that God will prove faithful. God will prove true to His promise. But that's hard because you're just experiencing your Christian life in terms of its boredom and its fatigue and its distraction, and that's blech, right? But patience will see you through. So, yeah, I just thought it's worthwhile to highlight the role of patience, the place of patience, so that way we can have a sense for where it fits and how it helps us. Yeah, because in many ways, while the good life is already at work in our members, its fullness or its completion is yet far off, all right? And it's going to take something to keep us from giving in to discouragement or to despair or relaxation of the tension of hope at as Saint Thomas describes it in one place.

Right? So if we're going to endeavor great things worthy of great honors because they're great, that is to say, if we're going to be magnanimous in this life, we're going to be born on by hope, we also need to counter the tendency of despair, the tendency to give up because the good seems too terribly far away, that it seems no longer to correspond to us, that it seems no longer on offer for us. And that's, yeah, that's what patience is going to ensure. That's what patience is going to safeguard. So, that's prayer. That's prayer

for us. That's prayer for you. That God will make us patient. That He will help us to suffer life well and to suffer His timing well, so that we can grow in faith and in hope and in charity in a way that most conduces to his glory and our salvation according to his designs and our abandonment to the same. So that's what I hope to share. I pray that it is a profit to you. This is Pines with Aquinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel, push the bell, and get sweet updates when other videos come out. Also, I contribute to a podcast called God's Planning that you might enjoy or you might not. It's hard to say, really no way of telling unless you consume it or

don't. Actually maybe it's time to consume fewer podcasts. I know that's the case for me, maybe it's the case for you. I think the point of a podcast is to stop listening to it but maybe I've said too much. Okay that's all I got guys. Know of my prayers for you, please pray for me and I will look forward to chatting with you next time on Pines with a Coinus.