Do you know of any good stories about the virtue of patience?

Question

It can be religious, but does not need to be. Please include a link or the text of the actual story...thanks in advance!

Answer 1

How about Rosie O'Donnell's girlfriend? She has to be a saint!

Answer 2

The only two things I know about patience are that mine get irritated by willfully stupid people, and that they say patience is a virtue. ..........It may be a virtue, but it will never help a rooster lay an egg.

Answer 3

The Clerk's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury tales.
That's a pretty sick story, though.

Answer 4

One time I was waiting in line to buy tickets for a Tool concert, but by the time it was my turn it was sold out.

Answer 5

I can have the complete answer for you in.... oh, say a couple weeks.

Answer 6

St Monica is considered the paragon of patience. She was patient with her licentious husband and wayward son and prayed for their conversion. Her son went on to be St. Augustine after 17 years of his mother's prayer and patience with his sinful lifestlye.Monica also had to bear with a cantankerous mother-in-law who lived in her home. Patricius criticized his wife, Monica because of her charity and piety, but always respected her. Monica’s prayers and example finally won her husband and mother-in-law to Christianity. Her husband died in 371, one year after his Baptism. Here is the story in short.

St. Monica
Widow; born of Christian parents at Tagaste, North Africa, in 333; died at Ostia, near Rome, in 387.

We are told but little of her childhood. She was married early in life to Patritius who held an official position in Tagaste. He was a pagan, though like so many at that period, his religion was no more than a name; his temper was violent and he appears to have been of dissolute habits. Consequently Monica's married life was far from being a happy one, more especially as Patritius's mother seems to have been of a like disposition with himself. There was of course a gulf between husband and wife; her almsdeeds and her habits of prayer annoyed him, but it is said that he always held her in a sort of reverence. Monica was not the only matron of Tagaste whose married life was unhappy, but, by her sweetness and patience, she was able to exercise a veritable apostolate amongst the wives and mothers of her native town; they knew that she suffered as they did, and her words and example had a proportionate effect.

Three children were born of this marriage, Augustine the eldest, Navigius the second, and a daughter, Perpetua. Monica had been unable to secure baptism for her children, and her grief was great when Augustine fell ill; in her distress she besought Patritius to allow him to be baptized; he agreed, but on the boy's recovery withdrew his consent. All Monica's anxiety now centred in Augustine; he was wayward and, as he himself tells us, lazy. He was sent to Madaura to school and Monica seems to have literally wrestled with God for the soul of her son. A great consolation was vouchsafed her — in compensation perhaps for all that she was to experience through Augustine — Patritius became a Christian. Meanwhile, Augustine had been sent to Carthage, to prosecute his studies, and here he fell into grievous sin. Patritius died very shortly after his reception into the Church and Monica resolved not to marry again. At Carthage Augustine had become a Manichean and when on his return home he ventilated certain heretical propositions she drove him away from her table, but a strange vision which she had urged her to recall him. It was at this time that she went to see a certain holy bishop, whose name is not given, but who consoled her with the now famous words, "the child of those tears shall never perish." There is no more pathetic story in the annals of the Saints than that of Monica pursuing her wayward son to Rome, wither he had gone by stealth; when she arrived he had already gone to Milan, but she followed him. Here she found St. Ambrose and through him she ultimately had the joy of seeing Augustine yield, after seventeen years of resistance.