The word in the New Testament that’s often used to describe perseverance is epimonía. It’s a Greek word that means ‘remaining’ – sticking with, staying with, being patient, enduring, or waiting. And anyone who meditates and learns to meditate, I think understands why that experience of endurance is life-giving. I’ll give you a couple of examples of how this word is used in the gospels and in the letters of St Paul.
In Luke 8:15, for example, Jesus is actually giving his commentary on his own parable, the parable of the sower, the parable of the seed being sown in the ground (Lk 8:5-8). And you remember that some of the seed falls on good soil, and some of it, a lot of it falls on soil that is not receptive or productive. But the seed in good soil, Jesus says, ‘represents those who bring a good and honest heart, to the hearing of the Word, hold it fast, and [by their epimonía] by their perseverance, yield a harvest (Lk 8:15).
Just read that again, because if you think of the seed here, which is a symbol in Jesus’ parable of the Word of God, if we think of that too in terms of the mantra, the seed in good soil represents those who bring a ‘good and honest heart to the hearing of the Word, who hold it fast, stay with it, and by their perseverance yield a harvest’.
( Breakthrough by Laurence Freeman OSB )
