“Amen,
I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John
the Baptist; yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” (Matthew 11:11)
Too often we
measure our lives from a worldly point of view.
We look for greatness here and now and fail to recognize that eternity
is what matters most.
Heaven must
be our goal. It must be the purpose of
our life. What good is it if we obtain
much greatness in this world and fail to make it to Heaven?
Think about
it. What will you rejoice in for all
eternity? Will you rejoice in the fact
that you accomplished this or that in this world? That you made lots of money? That you were praised by many in this
world? No, from Heaven none of this will
matter. What will matter is one thing:
charity.
What is “charity”?
Charity is
the last and the greatest of the three theological virtues; the other two are
faith and hope. While it is often called love and confused in the popular
understanding with common definitions of the latter word, charity is more than
a subjective feeling or even an objective action of the will toward another
person. Like the other theological virtues, charity is supernatural in the
sense that God is both its origin and its object. As Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.,
writes in his "Modern Catholic Dictionary", charity is the
"infused supernatural virtue by which a person loves God above all things
for his [that is, God's] own sake, and loves others for God's sake." Like
all virtues, charity is an act of the will, and the exercise of charity
increases our love for God and for our fellow man; but because charity is a
gift from God, we cannot initially acquire this virtue by our own actions.
Charity
depends on faith, because without faith in God we obviously cannot love God,
nor can we love our fellow man for God's sake. Charity is, in that sense, the
object of faith, and the reason why Saint Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13:13,
declares that "the
greatest of these [faith, hope, and charity] is charity."
Like the
other theological virtues (and unlike the cardinal virtues, which can be
practiced by anyone), charity is infused by God into the soul at baptism, along
with sanctifying grace (the life of God within our souls). Properly speaking
then, charity, as a theological virtue, can only be practiced by those who are
in a state of grace. The loss of the state of grace through mortal sin,
therefore, also deprives the soul of the virtue of charity. Deliberately
turning against God because of attachment to the things of this world (the
essence of mortal sin) is obviously incompatible with loving God above all
things. The virtue of charity is restored by the return of sanctifying grace to
the soul through the Sacrament of Confession.
God, as the
source of all life and all goodness, deserves our love, and that love is not
something that we can confine to attending church services on Sundays. We
exercise the theological virtue of charity whenever we express our love for
God, but that expression does not have to take the form of a verbal declaration
of love. Sacrifice for God's sake; the curbing of our passions in order to draw
closer to Him; the practice of the spiritual works of mercy in order to bring
other souls to God, and the corporal works of mercy to show the proper love and
respect for God's creatures -- these, along with prayer and worship, fulfill
our duty to "love
the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy
whole mind" (Matthew
22:37). Charity fulfills this duty, but also transforms it; through this
virtue, we desire to love God not simply because we must but because we
recognize that (in the words of the Act of Contrition) He is "all good and
deserving of all of my love." The exercise of the virtue of charity
increases that desire within our souls, drawing us further into the inner life
of God, which is characterized by the love of the Three Persons of the Holy
Trinity.
Thus, Saint
Paul rightly refers to charity as "the bond of perfection"
(Colossians 3:14), because the more perfect our charity, the closer our souls
are to the inner life of God.
While God is
the ultimate object of the theological virtue of charity, His creation --
especially our fellow man -- is the intermediate object. Christ follows the
"greatest and first commandment" in Matthew 22 with the second, which
is "like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matthew
22:39). As I wrote earlier, the spiritual and corporal works of mercy toward
our fellow man can fulfill our duty of charity toward God; but it is perhaps a
little harder to see how a love of self is compatible with loving God above all
things. And yet Christ assumes self-love when He enjoins us to love our
neighbor. That self-love, though, is not vanity or pride, but a proper concern
with the good of our body and soul because they were created by God and
sustained by Him. Treating ourselves with disdain -- abusing our bodies or
placing our souls in danger through sin -- ultimately shows a lack of charity
toward God. Likewise, disdain for our neighbor -- who, as the Parable of the
Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37) makes clear, is everyone with whom we come into
contact -- is incompatible with love of the God Who made him as well as us.
Or, to put
it another way, to the extent that we truly love God -- to the extent that the
virtue of charity is alive in our souls -- we will also treat ourselves and our
fellow man with the proper charity, caring for both body and soul.
The charity
we live here and now will radiate from our lives forever in Heaven. Even if our charity is not seen by others, it
will be seen in Heaven. Charity is the
result of a life lived fully surrendered to Christ.
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