🎙️ Intro
Welcome to VirTrue, where we work together to turn away from vice and adopt the virtuous life we are all called to.I’m your host, Jethro Higgins.
Today on VirTrue we’re kicking off Season 2 – Hope, and diving into the first sub-virtue: Patience.
🕊️ Virtue Description: Patience (Patientia)
Patience is the virtue of enduring trials, suffering, and delay with steadfast hope in God’s providence.According to St. Thomas Aquinas (ST II-II, Q136), it tempers anger and frustration by aligning the will with divine order, sustaining perseverance even in adversity.Patience is not passive—it is active endurance, strengthened by a confident expectation of future good. It anchors us in hope that suffering is temporary and redemptive.
Unlike meekness, which moderates our response to personal offense out of love, patience moderates sorrow and frustration in the face of hardship out of hope.It leads to growth, emotional peace, spiritual resilience, and compassion for others through our own trust in God’s timing.
🔥 Vice of Deficiency: Irascibility
Definition:A volatile, uncontrolled tendency to anger or emotional outbursts in the face of difficulty or delay.
Why it fits:Irascibility rejects suffering outright—it can’t tolerate contradiction or discomfort.It lashes out at trials instead of enduring them, making suffering harder to bear and harder to live with.
Description:The irascible person vents frustration—lashing out in traffic, fuming in long lines, or seething at setbacks.It masquerades as honesty or intensity, but stems from pride: “I shouldn’t have to suffer.”This vice spreads interior suffering to others through sarcasm, moodiness, or rage.
🪧 “Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.” —Ecclesiastes 7:9
🥀 Vice of Excess: Resignation
Definition:A passive, hopeless surrender to suffering or injustice, devoid of spiritual trust or purpose.
Why it fits:Where patience says “this suffering has meaning,” resignation says “this suffering is inevitable.”Rather than enduring for the sake of a greater good, the resigned person gives up resisting out of despair or apathy.
Description:The resigned soul accepts evil or disorder not with virtue, but with weariness.They grow silent when they should speak, and inactive when they should act.It’s not true endurance—it’s quiet despair, disguised as peace.
🌿 “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not give up.” —Galatians 6:9
We Interrupt These Notes to Ask for Your Support
The Social Catholic is a listener-supported podcast. To receive notifications about new episodes and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
OR
You can also support this content through PayPal (@TheSocialCatholic), Venmo (@jethrohiggins) or Zelle (@SocialCatholic). Your financial support no matter how small helps us to continue our work to fill the world with virtue. Thank you for your generous support!
The Social Catholic also sells devotional items including hand made paracord rosaries. Explore our products and make a purchase to help support our work. This week's episode is sponsored by the Mariner themed Hope Rosary
🪞 My Life
I’ve long mistaken resignation for patience.When hardship hits, I often throw up my hands and say “Well, there’s nothing I can do.”Only recently did I realize this is rooted not in virtue—but in despair.
When suffering affects only me, I give up. But when it touches my family or friends, I often shift toward irascibility, reacting with frustration that they have to suffer with me.
Instead of surrendering to God, I try to white-knuckle my way through suffering, fix it on my own, or avoid it altogether.Like Peter in The Chosen, I think I can outwork God’s plan: “I got this.”
But patience means saying: “God’s got this.”
🌍 The Secular Perspective
Modern culture cannot tolerate suffering.Every discomfort—real or imagined—sparks outrage, identity movements, or political action, not introspection or endurance.
We’ve lost sight of our eternal goal, believing we can perfect the world through activism alone.But without hope in God’s providence, this activism becomes resentment, not virtue.
We idolize comfort.Rather than suffer redemptively, we protest, withdraw, or despair.
True patience requires trust—not just in justice being done—but in God’s timeline for bringing it about.
🌟 Example Saint: St. Monica
* Endured for 20 years praying for her son Augustine’s conversion without despair or bitterness
* Transformed suffering into prayer, never ceasing to trust in God’s mercy
* Bore the burden of a volatile, pagan husband, eventually leading him to the faith
* Sought wisdom from spiritual guides like St. Ambrose, growing in discernment
* Saw her hope rewarded when her son became one of the greatest saints and theologians in Church history
St. Monica teaches us that patience isn’t weakness—it’s hope in action.
đź’¬ Tell Me What You Think
Share your thoughts in the comments or reply directly on Substack.Your insights may be featured in a future episode when we invite guests to reflect on this virtue.
✝️ Act of Patience
O my God,I place my trust in Your providence,and I choose to endure every trial, delay, and hardshipwithout complaint or resentment.I will bear suffering with hope,knowing that You are at work even when I cannot see it.I will restrain frustration, refuse despair,and remain steadfast in love when the path is difficult.I accept the crosses You permit in my life,and I unite them to the Cross of Your Son,confident that no suffering endured in faith is ever wasted.I will persevere in doing good,wait with trust on Your timing,and remain faithful until You bring all things to fulfillment.Amen.
🛡️ Closing Prayer
Lord, bless us with faith, hope, love, prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justicethat 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 blood of your precious 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:
