effortless virtues

It's been said that nothing worth anything comes easy. A problem arises when the Christian, living in this microwave society, aims to achieve a virtue--patience, faith, hope, love--using the same effort it takes to make a pop-tart.

The very virtue we aim for must be defined first. Take, for instance, patience. Anyone can be patient with pleasant people--but that is by definition not the virtue of patience, it is mere reciprocity. The virtue of patience does not arise until you have met one who absolutely does not deserve your patience. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Similarly, with faith, it is said, [y]ou believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that. In other words, there is no such thing as a virtue that comes easily:

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.
-- Chesterton's Heretics, with my emphasis