Patience is one of the more difficult virtues to practice, as it means we have to restrain ourselves from acting out on our impulses.
When someone insults us, our initial reaction is to fight back with an even greater insult.
Yet, when practicing patience, we hold back the insult and try to "turn the other cheek" as much as we can.
One particularly difficult test of our patience is when we have to be patient with our family and friends.
True test of patience
St. Francis de Sales explains this aspect of patience in his Introduction to the Devout Life:
A really patient servant of God is as ready to bear inglorious troubles as those which are honorable. A brave man can easily bear with contempt, slander and false accusation from an evil world; but to bear such injustice at the hands of good men, of friends and relations, is a great test of patience.
He then gives an example of a saint who endured much from his friends:
I have a greater respect for the gentleness with which the great St. Charles Borromeo long endured the public reproaches which a celebrated preacher of a reformed Order used to pour out upon him, than for all the other attacks he bore with.
St. Francis de Sales further expands on the difficulties we may endure with this test of patience:
For, just as the sting of a bee hurts far more than that of a fly, so the injuries or contradictions we endure from good people are much harder to bear than any others. But it is a thing which very often happens, and sometimes two worthy men, who are both highly well-intentioned after their own fashion, annoy and even persecute one another grievously.
Above all, we need to remember to be patient with those closest to us and with those we admire. It may not be easy, but it will be a great test of heroic virtue to be patient with the faults of good people.
