Quomodo per patientiam, et perseverantiam maturescat.
The Fruit of Patient Perseverance
Patience and perseverance bring virtue to mature fruit, while abandoning it too soon leaves good beginnings to fall unripe and unfit.
Through patience and perseverance, it reaches maturity. A virtue that's only begun does no good, unless it's carried through to the end. And so whoever begins a virtue through this is, as it were, forming a certain fruit of goodness in himself; but if he abandons the virtue he has begun before the end, he falls like an unripe fruit, unfit to eat, dropping before its time.1 And so patience and perseverance are deeply necessary for us, so that we may stand firm in the good we have rightly begun through God's grace, and persevere steadfastly all the way to the end.
Read the original Latin
Per patientiam et perseverantiam maturescit. Inchoata virtus non prodest, nisi ad finem perducatur. Ac per hoc quisquis virtutem inchoat, quasi quemdam in se bonitatis fructum format; sed si virtutem, quam incipit, ante finem deserit, velut immaturus et non aptus esui ante tempus fructus cadit. Et ideo patientia, et perseverantia valde nobis necessaria est, ut in bono, quod per Dei gratiam recte inchoavimus constanter usque in finem perseveremus.
Notes
- 1 ↩The Latin fructus is repeated at the end of the sentence; rendered as 'fruit' both times to preserve the simile's force in plain English.
De Arca Noe Morali et Mystica (On the Moral and Mystical Ark of Noah) companion
Keep the ark under construction
Hugh's method only works with daily practice — the Chosen Portion app gives you a short, structured devotional every morning, free.
Hugh's daily discipline of ordered meditation continues in Chosen Portion, which serves one structured devotional portion each day so the mind returns to the same interior work Hugh prescribed.
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