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The Virtue of Perseverance (Perseverantia) a Part of Fortitude - VirTrue Episode 50

VirTrue - Helping Man Grow in Truth and Virtue

You can plant the right seed. You can water it. You can cultivate it. You can watch the tree grow. You can even see fruit begin to form. And then you can lose the harvest because you weren’t willing to wait for the fruit to ripen. We love beginnings. The first day of a new workout. The first week at a new job. The first few chapters of a book. The beginning of a new prayer routine. The beginning of a marriage. The beginning of a business. The beginning of a vocation. Beginnings are exciting because we can imagine what the fruit will eventually become. But most worthwhile things don’t bear fruit quickly. Eventually the excitement disappears. Progress becomes difficult to see. The work becomes ordinary. And we begin asking: How long am I supposed to keep doing this? Maybe this isn’t working. Maybe I’ve done enough. Maybe I should move on to something else. Hugh of St. Victor uses the image of fruit ripening to describe what has to happen to virtue itself. A virtue that has begun must be carried through. The fruit has to be allowed to mature. That takes time. And the virtue that carries a difficult good through the time necessary for it to bear its fruit is Perseverance. And that’s why Perseverance matters. 🎙️ Intro Welcome back to VirTrue, where we’re learning what it means to become men of virtue and truth. We’re working through the virtue of Fortitude. So far we’ve looked at: Rest → Stability → Tolerance → Constancy → Fidelity Now we come to: Perseverance — Perseverantia. And Perseverance has a special relationship to everything we’re doing with VirTrue. In the VirTrue app, we’re using fruit as the visual representation of our growth in each virtue. As we move along the continuum from deficiency, toward virtue, and eventually toward excess, the fruit itself changes. It ripens. That isn’t just a convenient graphic. It’s an image that reaches directly back into the tradition we’re using to construct this model. Hugh of St. Victor describes virtue as something that must be allowed to mature and bear fruit. A good beginning isn’t enough. What begins must be carried through. Perseverance is what allows that ripening to happen. 🍎 Virtue Description Perseverance is the virtue by which a man continues steadfastly in a difficult good for as long as reason requires, bringing the work to completion and allowing its fruit to ripen. The key difficulty of Perseverance is time. St. Thomas Aquinas explains that perseverance is a distinct virtue because continuing in something difficult for a long period presents a difficulty of its own. Perseverance persists in a difficult good until the work is accomplished. That’s important. Perseverance doesn’t merely ask: Can you do this? It asks: Can you keep doing it for as long as the good requires? Aquinas identifies what makes Perseverance part of Fortitude: it stands firm against the difficulty that comes from length of time. 🧱 How is this different from Constancy? Constancy and Perseverance both keep us firmly pursuing the good, but Aquinas distinguishes them by what makes continuing difficult. Constancy deals with external obstacles. Something gets in your way. Someone opposes you. Circumstances change. The storm blows your ship off course. Constancy keeps you pointed toward the destination. Perseverance deals with a difficulty arising from the continuation of the work itself. Nothing necessarily went wrong. You’re just tired. You’ve been doing it for a long time. The excitement is gone. And you’re still not finished. 🤝 How is this different from Fidelity? Fidelity concerns remaining true to something entrusted to us. My marriage vows. My baptismal promises. My vocation. My word. My obligations. Perseverance concerns carrying the good through its necessary duration. Fidelity says: I will remain faithful to what I have promised. Perseverance gets up tomorrow morning and continues doing it. And the morning after that. And the morning after that. 🍎 Hugh of St. Victor This is where Hugh’s imagery becomes especially important for VirTrue. For Hugh, virtue has to be brought to maturity. The tree can be healthy. The fruit can begin growing. Everything can be moving in the right direction. But immature fruit isn’t the goal. It has to ripen. The time between beginning and completion isn’t wasted time. It’s part of the formation. That’s exactly what we’re trying to represent visually in the VirTrue app. Virtue isn’t a switch. Virtue is cultivated. Repeated acts form habits. Habits become stable. The passions become increasingly ordered by reason. Grace perfects us. And slowly the fruit matures. Perseverance protects that process from being abandoned before maturity. ✝️ Aquinas and Grace There’s an even deeper dimension. Aquinas distinguishes between persevering until the completion of a particular work and final perseverance—remaining in faith, hope, and charity until the end of our lives. Final perseverance isn’t something we can guarantee through sheer willpower. It requires grace. We need God’s help sustaining us in the good until the end. Christian Perseverance therefore depends upon the man continually choosing the good while continually depending upon God for the grace necessary to finish. ⚠️ Vice of Deficiency: Desistance Desistance is abandoning a good work before it has reached its proper completion because one is unwilling to endure the time or difficulty required for its fruit to mature. Desistance says: I’ve done this long enough. Nothing is happening. I’m tired of waiting. This isn’t worth it anymore. Think about how often we do this. You start praying the Liturgy of the Hours. Two weeks later, you’re done. You start exercising. Three weeks later, you’re done. You begin reading Scripture every morning. Then you miss two mornings. Then five. Eventually the Bible sits unopened. You decide you’re going to repair something in your marriage. The first conversations are uncomfortable. You don’t immediately see improvement. So you stop trying. The tragedy of Desistance is that the fruit may already be growing. You just can’t see it yet. Jesus describes seed that springs up quickly but has no depth of root. When difficulty arrives, it lasts only for a time and then falls away. By contrast, the good soil receives the word and bears fruit. St. Paul makes the connection even more explicit: “Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up.” — Galatians 6:9, NABRE In due time. There’s the problem. We want the harvest. We don’t always want due time. Desistance picks the fruit before it ripens. ⚠️ Vice of Excess: Protraction Protraction is unnecessarily extending a work beyond its proper term because one fails to recognize or accept when the work has reached its reasonable completion. Perseverance does not mean continuing forever. Aquinas gives us the important qualification that perseverance continues for as long as necessity requires. Reason still governs the virtue. There is a time to begin. There is a time to continue. And there is a time to finish. Protraction refuses to finish. Maybe you’ve been working on a project for six months that should have taken six weeks. You keep adding things. Keep revising. Keep polishing. Keep planning. Keep perfecting. At some point, continuing the work is no longer serving its purpose. Sometimes we even disguise Protraction as Perseverance: I’m not a quitter. Okay. But is the work unfinished? Or are you simply unwilling to let it be finished? A man can keep tinkering with a business strategy that has already served its purpose. He can remain indefinitely in preparation instead of acting. He can continue a temporary discipline after the reason for it has passed. He can keep revising something that needs to be published. He can keep tending fruit that’s already ripe. Eventually, ripe fruit left on the branch begins to rot. Perseverance knows how to finish. 👤 My Life * VirTrue itself is a pretty obvious example for me. * I’ve been working on VirTrue for nearly a decade. * Building a podcast episode is one thing. Building an entire model of virtue is another. * Then, taking that model and turning it into an app and a book introduces an entirely different timeline. * The fruit imagery we’re using in the VirTrue app makes Hugh’s description of Perseverance especially striking to me. * The fruit changes as you move along the continuum from deficiency to virtue to excess. * Virtue develops. It ripens. * There are plenty of points in a long project when the excitement of starting is gone, and the satisfaction of finishing hasn’t arrived yet. * That’s where Perseverance actually has something to do. * Desistance abandons the work before it bears fruit. * Protraction can become another danger: endlessly developing, changing, polishing, and adding instead of eventually saying, this is ready. * The goal isn’t to work on VirTrue forever. * The goal is for the work to bear the fruit God intends. 🌎 The World Our culture loves beginnings. January is full of beginnings. New diets. New gym memberships. New planners. New goals. New businesses. New podcasts. New apps. New commitments. Beginnings photograph well. Perseverance usually doesn’t. Nobody posts: Day 1,847 of being faithful to my wife. Year 12 of getting up and going to the same job. Week 463 of taking my kids to Mass. Today I prayed again even though nothing extraordinary happened. But that’s where character is actually being formed. Hebrews tells us to: “persevere in running the race that lies before us” while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus. And Hebrews uses the image of discipline eventually producing the “peaceful fruit of righteousness” in those trained by it. Fruit takes time. Marriage takes time. Fatherhood takes time. Sanctification takes time. Prayer takes time. Building something worthwhile takes time. The Catechism describes prayer as a battle requiring humble, trusting, and persevering love. Most of the Christian life isn’t lived at the dramatic beginning or triumphant ending. It’s lived in the middle. And Christ tells us: “the one who perseveres to the end will be saved.” — Matthew 24:13, NABRE 😇 Example Saint: St. Monica Born: c. 331, Thagaste, North Africa Died: 387, Ostia, Italy Why she fits St. Monica knew what it meant to wait for fruit. Her son Augustine walked far from the Christian faith she desperately wanted him to embrace. He pursued ambition. He pursued pleasure. He embraced Manichaeism. And Monica prayed. And prayed. And prayed. For years. She sought help from bishops. She spoke with her son. She followed him. She wept for him. And she continued praying when there seemed to be little reason to believe the harvest was close. She couldn’t convert Augustine herself. She couldn’t control the timetable. She could remain faithful to the good entrusted to her and continue doing what love required. Eventually Augustine encountered St. Ambrose in Milan. Grace continued working. Augustine converted. He was baptized by Ambrose at Easter in 387. The fruit Monica had waited so long to see finally ripened. And shortly afterward, at Ostia, Monica died. Her story gives us an extraordinary picture of Perseverance because she couldn’t force the fruit to ripen faster. Desistance would have stopped praying. Protraction would have tried to control a work that ultimately belonged to God. Monica remained faithful through the long middle. She cultivated. She prayed. She waited. And God gave the growth. The fruit of Monica’s Perseverance wasn’t merely the conversion of a difficult son. That son became St. Augustine of Hippo, bishop, Doctor of the Church, and one of the most influential Christian thinkers in history. Monica couldn’t possibly have seen everything that fruit would become while she was waiting for it to ripen. Neither can we. 🙏 Act of Perseverance O my God, give me the grace to continue faithfully in the good You have placed before me. When I grow weary, strengthen me. When I become impatient for results, teach me to trust Your providence. Give me the wisdom to know when a work requires endurance and when it has reached its proper end. May I neither abandon the fruit before it ripens nor cling to the work after its season is complete. Grant that I may persevere in faith, hope, and charity until the end of my life. Amen. 🙏 Closing Prayer Lord, bless us with faith, hope, love, prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice that we may live as you intended man to live, in all virtue and righteousness. Help us to flee from sin, and avoid all temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Protect us with a spiritual hedge in front of us, behind us, above us, below us, to our right, and to our left, within us, and all around us, and seal it with the precious blood of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to keep you in everything that we think, say, and do. Amen. Go out and fill the world with virtue. Deus Vult! Follow Us on Social Media and Other Podcast Networks: Get full access to The Social Catholic at socialcatholic.substack.com/subscribe