On Patience 3

And this indeed is a form of divine patience, as it were from afar, perhaps to be appraised as from on high. But what of that patience which was grasped openly among men on earth, as it were by the hand? God allows himself to be born in a mother's womb and, once born, he bears to grow up; and, grown up, he is not eager to be recognized, but is even insulting to himself, and is dipped by his own servant, and repels the assaults of the tempter by words alone. When from God he becomes a teacher, teaching man to escape death, trained, for the sake of salvation of course, in the forgiveness of offended patience, “he did not strive, he did not cry out, nor did anyone hear his voice in the streets; a bruised reed he did not break, a smoking flax he did not quench.” For the prophet had not lied, or rather the attestation of God himself, placing his Spirit with all patience in the Son. He did not refuse anyone who wished to cling to him; he despised no one's table or roof; he did not spurn sinners or tax collectors; he was not angry even with the city that had refused to receive him, when even his disciples wanted heavenly fire brought on so insulting a town. He healed the ungrateful; he gave way to those who plotted against him. That would be little, if he had not also kept his own betrayer with him and did not steadily denounce him. But when he is handed over, when he is led like a sheep to the slaughter (for so he no more opens his mouth than a lamb in the power of its shearer), he, to whom legions of angels would have come from heaven at one word if he had wished, did not approve even of the avenging sword of one disciple. The Lord's patience was wounded in Malchus. And so he both cursed the works of the sword for the future, and, by restoring to health one whom he himself had not injured, made amends through patience, the mother of mercy. I pass over the fact that he is crucified; for it was for this that he had come. Yet was there any need of insults too for one who was to undergo death? But, being about to depart, he wished to be sated with the pleasure of patience: he is spat upon, scourged, mocked, clothed in foul garments, crowned with fouler ones. Wonderful is the faithfulness of his equanimity! He who had resolved to lie hidden in the form of a man imitated nothing of man's impatience. From this above all, you Pharisees, you ought to have recognized the Lord: no human being would achieve patience like this. Such and so great proofs (whose very greatness among the nations is a reason for disparaging the faith, but among us is its reason and foundation) prove clearly enough, not only by the Lord's words in teaching but also by his sufferings in enduring, to those to whom it is given to believe, that patience is God's nature, the effect and excellence of a certain inborn property.