Quote for the Evening After Yelling at My Family Because They Interrupted My Blogging with German Vocab and Plumbing and Dogs Jumping in the Bath

"True patience and humility can only be acquired and kept when the innermost heart is humble. Coming from such a source it will have no need of the help provided by a cell nor of the refuge characteristic of living alone. It does not need the protection of something exterior since it is supported within by the virtue of humility, its mother and custodian.

"If we become upset by some provocation [see blog title--FB], then clearly the foundations of humility are not solidly established in us and the edifice we have raised is struck down into disastrous ruin by the onset of even a minor storm. Indeed, patience is neither praiseworthy nor admirable if its condition of tranquility remains unassailed by any hostile attacks. But it is outstanding and splendid when it remains immovable during the raging storms of temptation. The notion is there that it will be harassed and wrecked by adversity. In fact it is made all the stronger and it becomes more sharply real in a situation when there is the conviction that it will be battered. Everyone knows that passion and forebearance underlie patience, and obviously no one may be called patient except the man who has endured without rancor all the suffering heaped upon him. This is the man so rightly praised by Solomon: 'Better a patient man than a strong one, better the man who restrains his anger than the one who captures a city' (Proverbs 16:32). And again: 'The equable man is very rich in prudence, and the puny-minded man is certainly foolish' (Proverbs 14:29)."

--John Cassian, Conference 18, trans. Colm Lubheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), p. 193.

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