Caput XXVI. De perseverantia in bonis operibus
Caput XXVI. De perseverantia in bonis operibus
What's looked for in a Christian isn't the beginning of a good work, but the end: because each person will be judged by how they finish. There are those who start well and finish badly in the way they live; just like Judas, at first an apostle and afterward the Lord's betrayer, and conscious of what he'd done, hanged himself with a noose (Acts 1:18).✦ I). Saul started badly but finished well: at first a persecutor, afterward a preacher. The strength of a good work is perseverance, with the Lord himself saying: The one who perseveres to the end will be saved.✦ (Matt. 10:22). So it's not the one who begins the good, but the one who perseveres in the good, who will be saved. Our way of life is pleasing to God, then, when we bring the good we've begun to completion with a persevering finish. So the virtue lies not in having begun the good, but in having brought it to completion. The reward isn't promised to those who begin, but given to those who persevere. In a person's life, what's always looked for is the end — what kind of person they are in the final stretch of their life — because each one is justified or condemned based on their own end. So let each person strive with the greatest urgency to complete the good they've begun, so that they may deserve to receive an eternal reward from the Lord.
Read the original Latin
Non quaeritur in Christiano initium boni operis, sed finis: quia de fine suo unusquisque judicabitur. Sunt enim qui bene incipiunt, et male finiunt conversationem suam; sicut Judas primo apostolus, et postea proditor Domini, et facti sui conscius laqueo se suspendit (Act. I). Saulus male coepit, sed bene finivit: primo persecutor, postea praedicator. Virtus boni operis est perseverantia, ipso Domino dicente: Qui perseveraverit usque in finem, hic salvus erit. (Matth. X, 22). Non igitur qui coeperit bonum, sed qui perseveraverit in bono, hic salvus erit.
Tunc enim placet Deo nostra conversatio, quando bonum quod inchoamus, perseveranti fine complebimus. Bonum ergo non coepisse, sed perfecisse, virtus est. Non inchoantibus praemium promittitur, sed perseverantibus datur. Semper in vita hominis finis quaeritur, qualis sit extremo tempore vitae suae: quia de fine suo unusquisque aut justificatur, aut condemnatur. Ideo unusquisque instantissime bona quae coepit, perficere contendat, ut perpetuam a Domino mereatur mercedem accipere.
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