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Every time I say the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, I pray, at the Crucifixion, for the grace of perseverance. Perseverance is needed in any worthwhile endeavor we undertake in this life.

As a woman, perseverance is so vital to everything we do each day. We do not see the results right away. We struggle, we get discouraged. The little, constant things may get us down.

But we must persevere. And then one day, we will look back and see that what we have accomplished, with the grace of God, is good.

Persevere in Noble Pursuits ~ Fr. Edward Garesche, Catholic Book of Character and Success

Someone has defined courage as a dogged determination to go on. More than most young people realize, this is essential for success. To keep on trying, hammering at difficulties, pressing forward, over rough ground and smooth, seeking an objective through thick and thin, is the way to succeed.

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but rather to the man who will keep on trying. Everlasting perseverance, the quality of getting up after every fall and coming back after every blow, wins at last.

Discouragement is the most fatal obstacle to success. Those who never know they are beaten, never are beaten. Defeat has no power to detain them. After each calamity, they come back, stronger than before.

But the one who believes he is beaten, has actually lost the battle, even if he still has enough resources and enough strength to win a victory. The army that can persevere, fighting through in spite of reverses, wins the day.

This is an immensely important conviction for young people to bring home to themselves at the beginning of their career. Find out what you want, select a worthy objective, and keep on struggling toward it, and you will inevitably succeed, provided you have life and strength and are aiming at some achievement you are capable of accomplishing.

Keep at it, spend continuous effort, and you will achieve what you wish.

Prudence must, of course, direct even your perseverance. A man who keeps on under a strain, and insists on getting results quickly, may wear himself out before he reaches his goal.

There is a sort of perseverance that consists in always coming back to your objective, seeking it again and again, in spite of weariness, in spite of enforced rest, in spite even of the sickness of hope deferred. This intermittent perseverance, as we may call it, this quality of returning to effort in the same direction, is often more prudent than a headlong and continuous drive that wears out your energy.

It is not so much getting results quickly that counts as keeping at a reasonable degree of effort in the same direction. This is what we mean by perseverance. The word perseverance comes from the Latin per, which means “through,” and severus, which means “strict.” There is a good deal of wisdom in this derivation.

A persevering person is one who is strict with himself, who is hard on himself, who disregards his natural feelings and weariness, his cravings and grudges, and hammers through in spite of his own weakness.

The greatest obstacles to perseverance are often not the difficulties you meet from without, but the difficulties that come from within. If you are strong enough to overcome yourself, to disregard your own weariness and discouragement, and to subdue your own indecision and push straight to the forward line in spite of your own weaknesses, then you are going to persevere.

It is not what other people do to you, or what events do to you, that keeps you from persevering, but what you experience inwardly of weakness and changeableness.

Perseverance is chiefly rooted in an unwavering will. It is a determination to keep up the fight, to go on with the struggle, to pay the price fully and courageously.

Of course, one must be sure that what he is making a persevering effort to achieve is really worth having. “Be sure you are right, then go ahead!” advises the homely saying.

Anyone who starts out after something that is really not worth having is wasting the fine quality of perseverance. He is like one who pays a great price for a gold coin that is gold only on the surface, or like those luckless explorers of old times who came to this country and gathered huge quantities of copper pyrites, “fool’s gold,” as it is called, and took it home under the impression that their hard-gotten cargo was made up of precious metal.

Every ambition and every aspiration, especially in youth, ought to be assayed and tested with the touchstone of genuine worth. Many a young person makes a failure of his life because he sets out after something that he conceives to be very valuable and spends his life trying to get it, only to regret it later.

Some make wealth their objective and sacrifice everything else to get it. The gain, they find, is not worth the battle. Money does not bring them the satisfaction they thought it would, and they have lost things much more precious in trying to get rich.

When money is made only a means to an end, as it should be, it may be good to persevere in trying to get it. But money for its own sake is not worth trying for; it is sure to disappoint you.

As we observed before, the same thing can be said of fame or reputation. Too many young persons with fine talents and native gifts conceive an immense ambition to be famous. Their great objective is glory, and they will do anything to achieve it, but after a time, they find that glory is vain and deceptive. They are not satisfied when they have achieved it, and all their efforts to that end appear to them as wasted or worse than wasted.

One could make very similar reflections concerning pleasure, but with still more emphasis. One who makes pleasure his objective is likely to become the most wretched of mortals, because pleasure is not an end in itself, but only a means of helping us to further ends.

It is a passing reward given to recreate and cheer us, but, pursued for its own sake, it becomes a source of satiety and disgust. As Socrates wisely said of those who pursue sensual pleasures especially, “They itch to scratch, and they scratch to itch” — a pitifully vicious circle.

The wise person will make the gaining of honor, wealth, and pleasure secondary to the living of a virtuous life of upright kindness and service. In this way, he will achieve real happiness so far as it is possible for anyone to attain it here, and hereafter he will arrive at that full contentment and satisfaction which is the reward of perseverance in right living, justice, and kindness.

“Cheerfulness strengthens the heart and makes us persevere in a good life. Therefore, the servant of God ought always to be in good spirits.” – St. Philip Neri

NEW PODCAST! Cheerful Chats for Catholic Children!

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Around the Year with the Von Trapp Family ~ Available here.

Most people only know the young Maria from The Sound of Music; few realize that in subsequent years, as a pious wife and a seasoned Catholic mother, Maria gave herself unreservedly to keeping her family Catholic by observing in her home the many feasts of the Church’s liturgical year, with poems and prayers, food and fun, and so much more!

With the help of Maria Von Trapp, you, too, can provide Christian structure and vibrancy to your home. Soon your home will be a warm and loving place, an earthly reflection of our eternal home.

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