Divine Intimacy: Meditations on the Interior Life for Everyday of the Year

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252. CORRESPONDENCE WITH GRACE
NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Lord, grant that Your grace in me may not be void.


MEDITATION

1. Today the liturgy invites us to consider the grave problem of our correspondence with grace. It does this by showing us the sad picture of the sufferings of Israel, the chosen people, upon whom God had showered His benefits, whom He had surrounded with graces, protected with jealous care, and who, in spite of all this, were lost through their own infidelity. In the Epistle (1 Cor 10,6-13), St. Paul, after mentioning certain points about Israel’s unfaithfulness, concludes : “ Now all these things happened to them in figure, and they are written for our correction.... Wherefore, he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall.” This is a strong call to vigilance and humility.

If God has gone before us with His graces, if He has called us to a more intense interior life and to closer intimacy with Himself, all this, far from making us presumptuous, should deepen our humility of heart. God’s gifts are preserved beneath the ashes of humble mistrust of self. Woe to us if we consider ourselves henceforth free from the weaknesses which we meet and, perhaps, condemn in others! Rather let us humbly say: “Lord, help me, or I shall do worse.” At the same time that he exhorts us to be humble, St. Paul also urges us to have confidence, because “ God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able: but will make also with temptation issue, that you may be able to bear it.” The Apostle is telling us that the knowledge of our weakness should not discourage us, because God is always ready to sustain us with His grace. God knows our weaknesses, the struggles we have to undergo, and the temptations that assail us; and for each of them He gives us the measure of grace we need in order to triumph over them. It is very true that when the storm is raging we can feel only the impact of the struggle, and the grace that God is giving to help us remains completely hidden; nevertheless, this grace is there and we should be certain of it, because “ God is faithful.” “ God has always helped me....” St. Thérése of the Child Jesus said, “I count on His aid. My sufferings may reach even greater heights, but I am sure He will not abandon me” (St).


2. The Gospel (Lk 19,41-47) continues the same subject of the Epistle and shows us Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. The Creator, the Lord, the Redeemer weeps over the ruin of His creatures, the people whom He has loved with predilection, even choosing them as the companions of His earthly life, and whom He had desired to save at any price.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem...how often would I have gathered together thy children as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldst not! ” (Mt 23,37). This was the constant attitude of Jesus toward the holy city, but it always remained blind to every light, deaf to every invitation, and the Savior, shortly before going to His Passion, broke forth into His last sorrowful admonition: “If thou also hadst known and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace!” But again the city resists, and Jesus, after having loved it so much, and after having wept over it as a mother weeps over her son who has gone astray, predicts its ruin: “Thy enemies...shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation.”

Do you know how to recognize the moments in which Our Lord visits your soul? A word read or heard, perhaps even by chance, an edifying example, an interior inspiration, a new light which makes you see your faults more clearly and opens new horizons of virtue and of good—all are visits from Jesus. And you, how do you correspond? Is your soul sensitive to these lights, to these admonitions? Do you not sometimes turn your gaze away, fearing that the light you have glimpsed may ask you for sacrifices which are too painful for your self-love?

Oh! if you had always recognized the moment in which the Lord visited you! If you had always been open to His action! ‘Try then to begin again today, resolve to commence anew each time that you happen to give in to nature. “The things that are to your peace, ” your good, your sanctification, are precisely here, in this continual adherence to the impulses of grace.


COLLOQUY

“As I have already confessed to You, O glory of my life, O Lord God, strength of my salvation, I have sometimes placed my hopes in my own virtue, which was no virtue; and when I attempted to run, thinking I was very strong, I fell very quickly and went backward instead of forward. What I expected to reach, disappeared, and thus, O Lord, in various ways You have tested my powers. With light from You, I now see that I could not accomplish by myself the things that I wanted to do most. I said to myself: ‘I shall do this, I shall finish that,’ and I did not do either the one or the other. The will was there but not the power, and if the power was there, my will was not; this because I had trusted in my own strength. Sustain me then, O Lord, for alone I can do nothing. However, when You are my stability, then it is true stability; but when I am my own stability, then it is weakness” (St. Augustine).

“O Lord, teach me to be always docile to Your grace, to say ‘yes” to You always. To say ‘yes’ to Your will as expressed in the commandments, to say ‘ yes ’ to the intimate inspirations by which You invite me to a more intense union, to more generous self-denial and more complete detachment. Grant that I may always be ready to open the door of my will to You, or rather, to keep it open always, so that You can enter there, and thus I shall not miss a single one of Your visits, a single one of Your delicate touches; not one of Your requests will escape me.

“Make me understand well that true peace does not consist in being exempt from difficulties or in following my own wishes, but in total adherence to Your will, and in docility to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit ” (cf. Sr. Carmela of the Holy Spirit, O.C.D.).

253. THE PRECEPT OF CHARITY

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Lord, teach me to love You truly, with my whole heart, my whole soul, and with all my strength.


MEDITATION

1. “Virtue lies in the golden mean.” This maxim which is so exact for the moral virtues, cannot be applied to the theological virtues, which, having an infinite object, can have no limit. The measure of our faith, hope, and charity is to believe, to hope, and to love without measure. However much we love God, we can never love Him too much, nor can we love Him as much as He is lovable. By its very nature then, the precept of charity admits of no limit and we could never say, “I shall love God up to a certain point and that will be enough,” for by doing so, we would renounce tending toward the perfection of charity, which consists in loving God in a way that is as nearly proportionate as possible to His infinite lovableness. This is why it is necessary never to stop in the practice of charity, employing all our strength that it may continually increase in our soul. Because the precept of charity concerns the love of God—the infinite, supreme Good—it possesses an absolute character: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength” (Mk 12,30). If we, so little and so limited, do not employ in the love of God all the little that we have and are, how can we truly tend toward the perfection of charity? If it is not in our power to love God as much as He deserves to be loved, it is, however, possible for us to strive to love Him with our whole strength, and this is exactly the perfection of love which God asks of us.

Furthermore, even human love is by its nature “totalitarian.” The more intimate and intense a friendship, the more it demands the exclusive gift of the heart; and when a friend begins to make reservations or to give his affection to others, the friendship loses its vigor, grows cold, and may even vanish. Therefore, we must guard against any coldness in our friendship with God, being careful to keep for Him alone the first fruits of our heart and to employ ourself wholly in loving Him with all our strength. It is true that only in heaven will we be able to love God with all our strength and in such a way that our love tends always and actually toward Him. Although this absolute totality and stability in love is not possible to us here on earth, it is possible for us to make an act of love each time that we will to do so. It is always in our power to unite our whole being—heart, affections, will, and desires—to God by an act of love.


2. Jesus has said: “He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me” (Mt 10,37); hence, the precept of charity commands us to love God above all things. However, this precept can be interpreted in two ways. To love God more than any creature to the point of being ready to give up everything rather than offend God gravely is the first degree of charity. It is indispensable for all who desire to be friends of God and to possess His grace, and therefore, it is required of all. But in a more profound sense, to love God above all things means to prefer Him to everything else, not only to what might be an occasion of mortal or venial sin, but even to all that does not fully correspond to His good pleasure. This is the degree of perfect charity toward which every soul aspiring to intimate friendship with God must tend. This degree requires absolute renouncement and absolute purity, that is, the total absence of every shadow of sin or attachment to creatures, The exercise of perfect charity requires, therefore, a work of total purification, a work that is accomplished only by charity: “Charity causes emptiness in the will with respect to all things, since it obliges us to love God above them all” (J.C. AS II, 6,4).

We should be convinced that here on earth the practice of charity is closely united with that of renouncement, each being proportionate to the other; the more perfect and intense is charity, the more total is the renunciation required; but this is so precisely that the soul may attain to loving God with all its strength : “The strength of the soul,” says the mystical doctor, “ consists in its faculties, passions, and desires, all of which are governed by the will. Now when these faculties, passions, and desires are directed by the will toward God, and turned away from all that is not God, then the strength of the soul is kept for God, and thus the soul is able to love God with all its strength ” (AS LHI, 16,2).

This is the great function of renouncement in respect to charity: to free the powers of the soul so entirely that they can be wholly employed in loving and serving God alone. If we really want to love God with our whole heart, we must be very generous in renunciation and detachment. This in itself is an exercise of love because it disposes the soul for perfect charity.


COLLOQUY

“QO Lord God, was it not enough to permit us to love You without its being necessary to invite us to do so by exhortations, even obliging us to do so by commanding it? Yes, O divine Goodness, in order that neither Your greatness nor our lowliness, nor any other pretext could prevent us from loving You, You have commanded us to do so. O my God, if we could only comprehend the happiness and honor of being able to love You, how indebted we should feel to You, who not only permit but command us to love You! O my God, I do not know whether I should love more Your infinite beauty which Your divine goodness commands me to love, or this goodness of Yours which commands me to love such infinite beauty! O beauty of my God, how lovable you are, being revealed to me by Your immense goodness! O goodness, how lovable you are, communicating to me such eminent beauty!

“O Lord, how sweet is this commandment. If it were given to the damned, they would be instantly freed from their sufferings and supreme misfortune, for the blessed enjoy beatitude only by complying with it. O celestial Love! how amiable You are to our souls! O divine Goodness, may You be blessed eternally, You who so urgently command us to love You, although Your love is so desirable and necessary for our happiness that, without it, we could only be unhappy!

“O Lord, in heaven we shall need no commandment to love You, for our hearts, attracted and ravished by the vision of Your sovereign beauty and goodness, will necessarily love You eternally. There our hearts will be wholly free of passions, our souls will be completely delivered from distractions, our minds will have no anxieties, our powers will have no repugnances, and therefore we shall love You with a perpetual, uninterrupted love. But in this mortal life, we cannot achieve such a perfect degree of love, because, as yet, we do not have the heart, the soul, the mind, or the powers of the blessed. Nevertheless, You desire us to do in this life everything that depends on ourselves to love You with all our heart and all the strength we have; this is not only possible, but very easy, for to love You, O God, is a sovereignly lovable thing ” (cf. St. Francis de Sales).

254. THE EXCELLENCE OF CHARITY

PRESENCE OF GOD - Make me understand, O Lord, the preeminence of charity, that I may apply myself to it with all my heart.


MEDITATION

1. The three theological virtues, having God for their immediate object, are superior to the moral virtues which are directed to the government of our conduct; but among the three theological virtues, charity holds the primacy. It holds the primacy because, being inseparable from grace, it is the constitutive and indispensable element of our supernatural life. Where there is no charity there is neither grace nor life, but only death. “ He that loveth not, abideth in death,” and contrariwise, “ He that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him” (1 Jn 3,14 — 4,16). Faith and hope can subsist in a soul which has lost grace, but charity cannot. It is so vital that it cannot co-exist with the death that is caused by sin. Furthermore, it is so vital that it is imperishable and will remain unchanged for all eternity. In heaven, faith and hope will cease because they bear with them some imperfection: faith makes us know God without giving us the vision of Him, and hope lets us hope in Him without giving us possession of Him. Hence, “when that which is perfect is come, ” that is, the beatific vision, these two virtues will have no further reason for existing. However, it is not the same with charity which implies no imperfection, since by it, we love God either in the obscurity of faith, or in the clarity of vision, and therefore St. Paul says, “Charity never falleth away.” Here on earth, to adhere to God, “these three remain: faith, hope, and charity: but the greatest of these is charity” (1 Cor 13,8.13).

Faith and hope are incomplete virtues, because without charity they cannot unite us to God and produce the works of eternal life. The faith and hope of a sinner, one who has lost charity, are inactive and inoperative; they remain in him, it is true, but they are there as if dead. “Faith without works is dead” (Fas 2,26), and only “faith that worketh by charity...availeth anything” (Gal 5,6), and this to the extent, that “ if I should have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing ” (1 Cor 13,2). It is charity that gives the warmth and strength of eternal life to faith and hope; it is charity that infuses vigor into these virtues, for only he who loves is capable of abandoning himself to God with eyes closed.


2. The moral virtues can make a man honest and virtuous, and can regulate his actions according to reason, but they can in no way bring him into friendship with God or even give him the possibility of meriting eternal life. Without the life-giving breath of charity, everything is dead, sterile, cold; without charity, man is confined to the natural level; he cannot be a child of God, nor His friend; he cannot live in intimacy with the three divine Persons. Charity is the principle, root, source, and measure of our supernatural life.
The more we love, the more the life of grace increases in us and the more we live in God: “ We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love ” (1 Jn 3,14).

It is a truly impressive thought : the greatest and most beautiful works, such as the apostolate, works of beneficence, and even martyrdom, are of no value without charity. “If I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing” (1 Cor 13,3). But when charity is present, everything changes in appearance, like a landscape under the sun’s caress, and with the change in appearance, the value also changes; even the lowliest works, the most secret acts of virtue, if performed out of love for God, acquire value for eternal life. This is the miracle worked by charity, which St. Thomas calls with good reason, the “form and mother” of all the virtues. “It is love alone which gives value to all things, ” says St. Teresa, “and the most needful thing is that it be so great that nothing can hinder its operation” (Exe, 5). All this enables us to understand that charity is truly “ the greatest and the first commandment,” on which “the whole law” depends (Mt 22,38.40). The soul that has understood this great truth, is no longer preoccupied with so many more or less accessory practices and exercises in its spiritual life, but aims straight at the heart, at the center of this life, at charity. This soul’s only concern is to use all its strength in the exercise of love, to increase this love, to live as much as possible in continual, actual love; therefore, it strives in all things to work for the sole purpose
of pleasing God and giving Him glory.


COLLOQUY

“Clothe me, O Lord, with the purple garment of charity which not only adds grace to faith and hope, but causes the soul to rise to so lofty a point that it is brought very near You and becomes very beautiful and pleasing in Your eyes. It is the virtue which most attracts Your love, protects the soul against pride and gives value to the other virtues, bestowing on them vigor and strength, grace and beauty so that they may please You, for without charity no virtue has grace before Your eyes.

“O sweetest love of God, how little are You known! He who has found Your fountain has found rest. You remove from the affections of the will whatever is not God and set it upon Him alone, and then you prepare this faculty and unite it to God through love.

“O God, teach me to use all my powers to love You, so that all the faculties of my soul and body: memory, understanding, and will, inward and outward senses, desires of the sensual part and of the spiritual part, will work in love and for the sake of love. Grant that all that I do I may do with love, and all that I suffer I may suffer with the pleasure of love, and that in this way, my God, I may keep all my strength for You” (J.C. DN H, 21,10.11 — SM I, 16 — SC, 28,8).

"I resolve, O my God, to have no other purpose but love in all my actions, interior as well as exterior, always saying and asking myself: What am I doing now? Am I loving my God? And if I see that there is any obstacle to pure love, I shall reproach myself, remembering, O Lord, that I must return You love for love. Well do You make me understand that the more I love You, the more diligent I shall be in the observance of all Your holy laws” (cf. T.M. Sp).

255. THE ACT OF LOVE

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Lord, grant that I may love You for Yourself and not for my own consolation, and that in loving You, I may always seek Your will, not mine.


MEDITATION

1. To love a person is to desire his well-being. We understand, therefore, that the essence of love is in the act of the will by which we wish good. This does not take away from the fact that the act may often be accompanied by sensible affection, making our love both an act of the will and of the sensibility. Nevertheless, it is clear that the substance of real love is not to be found in the emotions but in the act
of the will. Charity does not change our manner of loving, but penetrates it, supernaturalizes it, making the will and the sensibility capable of loving God. Yes, even sensible affection can be engaged in the act of supernatural love; God does not despise this humbler and less lofty manifestation of our love for Him, because He has commanded us to love Him not only with our whole mind and our whole soul, but also with our whole heart. All our powers—intellectual, volitive, and affective—are engaged in the act of love, and yet the substance of this act is not found in the feelings but in the will. Therefore, when our emotions are cold in our love of God, and we “ feel” nothing, there is no reason for us to be disturbed; we will find less satisfaction in our love—for it is much more pleasant for us to feel that we are loving—but our act of love will be equally true and perfect. Even more, lacking the impetus and pleasure which come from our feelings, we will be obliged to apply ourself more resolutely to the act of the will and this, far from harming it, will make it more voluntary, and therefore, more meritorious. Precisely because the substance of love is in the act of the will that wishes good to God, in order to make our love purer and more intense, Our Lord will often deprive us of all consoling feelings; we will no longer feel that we love God—and this will give us pain—but in reality, we will love Him in the measure that we will with determination what He wills, and want His good pleasure and delight above all things. Besides, it is not in our power to feel love but it is always in our power to make voluntary acts of love; it is always in our power to wish good to God, striving with all our strength to live for Him and to please Him.


2. St. John of the Cross says: “It is by an act of the will that the soul is united to God; this act is love. Union with God is never wrought by feeling or exertions of the desire, for these remain in the soul as aims and ends” (L). The operation of the will is the act of love by means of which we wish good to God and conform our will to His. This operation properly ends in God, and is the true means of uniting us to Him. The feeling of love, on the contrary, is only a subjective impression sometimes produced in our sensibility by the act of love. It ends in the soul which experiences it and is a source of consolation, but we can clearly see that of itself it has no power to unite the soul to God. However, the soul can and should make use of it to give itself to God with more generosity, and in this sense, the feeling of love intensifies the operation of the will. Unfortunately, as we are so eager to seek satisfaction even in the most sacred things, the soul may easily stop at the sweetness of these feelings, and then it ceases to tend toward God with all its strength.

Therefore, it is very expedient for us that God should make us go through periods of aridity, thus forcing us to go to Him by the pure operation of our will. “Then,” says the mystical doctor, “ the soul sets on God alone its affection, joy, contentment, and love, leaving all things behind and loving Him above them all.” And he adds, “He would be very ignorant who should think that, because spiritual delight and sweetness are failing him, God is failing him, and he should rejoice and be glad because he has them and think that for this reason he has God” (ibid.). No, true love and union with God do not consist in this, but in the pure operation of the will, which seeks God and His will above everything.

Therefore, if we really want to love God and be united to Him, we must “hunger and thirst for God’s will alone,” that is, seek His will alone, preferring it always to our own. This way of loving takes us completely out of ourself, out of what is deepest in our ego, our own will, and plunges us wholly into the will of God. If we truly realize that to attain perfect union with God, our whole life must be enclosed in His will, we will feel the need of being constantly generous in order to go out of our own will at every moment and abide in God’s will.


COLLOQUY

“Ah, my God and Lord, how many there are who seek in You their own consolation and pleasure, and desire favors and gifts from You; but those who long to give You pleasure, please You and to give You something at their own cost, setting their own interests last, are very few.

“Give me the grace, O God, to follow You with a real love and a spirit of sacrifice, so that I may never seek for consolation or pleasure either in You or in aught else. I do not desire to pray to You for favors, for I see clearly that I have already received enough of these, and all my anxiety is set upon rendering You some service such as You merit, although it cost me much. O my Beloved, all that is rough and toilsome I desire for myself, and all that is sweet and delectable I desire for You” (J.C. DN I, 19,4 — SM II, 52).

“O God, how necessary it is that we should learn to love You without any motive of self-interest : To walk along the road of love as one should, we must have the one desire of serving You, O Christ crucified; therefore, I neither ask for consolations nor desire them, and I beg You not to give them to me in this life.

“No, my God, love consists not in interior favors but in the firmness of our determination to please You in everything, and to endeavor in all possible ways not to offend You, and in praying for Your greater honor and glory. It consists especially in perfect conformity to Your will, so that I too want—and steadfastly—all that I know You will, accepting the bitter and the sweet with equal joy. O strong love of God! I really think nothing seems impossible to one who loves ” (T.J. Int C IV, 2-13; F, 5; Con, 3).

256. THE LIFE OF LOVE

PRESENCE OF GOD - Grant, O Lord, that even while I am here on earth, I may love You as I shall love You in heaven.


MEDITATION

1. If it may be said that by faith “eternal life begins in us” (St. Thomas, IIe II, q.4, a.1, co.), the same may be said—and with greater reason—of charity, which will remain unchanged even in heaven. Eternal life will be essentially a life of love, of love which has reached its we shall finally be able to fulfill with absolute perfection the precept of loving God with all our strength. On this earth such perfection is possible only relatively; nevertheless, even now we possess the same charity with which we shall love God in heaven. Therefore, we can begin even now that life of love which will flower completely in eternity. Our love in heaven will have the characteristics of completeness and absolute continuity, with the impossibility of its ever failing. We cannot attain this while we are on earth, but we can strive for it by the exercise of a pure, intense love, a love that is, as far as possible, always in action. These, then, are the qualities our love for God should have: purity, intensity, continuity.

Our love for God will be pure when we love Him so much that we seek only His glory and the accomplishment of His will: “Hallowed be Thy name. . . Thy will be done” (Mt 6,9.10). This is the only real good that we, poor creatures, can wish for our God. All the glory we can possibly give Him consists in saying a wholehearted yes to His holy will, in rivalling the angels and blessed in heaven by carrying out His will here on earth with such great love and completeness: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (ibid.). The purity of our love should consist in seeking God’s glory alone, His will alone, completely forgetting ourself, in being ready to sacrifice every wish, desire, and interest for Him.

Therefore, even in the spiritual life, our first thought should be, not our own perfection, progress, and consolation, but always God’s delight, good pleasure, and glory. It is thus that we will serve our own interests better, for he who gives himself to God, completely forgetting himself, draws down upon himself the fullness of divine love. What greater good could come to us than being loved by Infinite Love?


2. But then it is necessary that our love for God be intense and vigorous, because in this way the inclination of our will toward Him will always grow stronger. “Amor meus pondus meum,” St. Augustine says, love is the weight which draws me, which draws my entire being, all my will, all my life, into God. And it is necessary that this weight increase, so as to draw us into God with an ever-increasing speed. St. John of the Cross says that one degree of love is sufficient for a soul to be in its center, which is God, but the more degrees of love it has, the deeper it goes into its center, and hence, “the strongest love is the most unitive love” (LF 1,13).

Love becomes stronger and increases by exercise, provided the exercise is generous and intense, making use of all the powers of the soul. When we perform our actions, not carelessly or negligently, but with our whole heart, that is, with all the good will of which we are capable, our love immediately increases, and with every act there is a corresponding growth in charity. In this way our love will always continue to grow, it will become strong and mature, and will be able to draw us wholly into God. Let us try, then, to make as many acts of love as possible during the course of our day so that we will be able to live—as far as is attainable in this life—in continual, actual love.

But there is one time in the day which is especially intended to make us more fervent in charity, and this is the time of prayer, prayer understood as an intimate encounter of our soul with God by love, as an intercourse of friendship between God and us. It is especially then that we must endeavor to recollect ourself; we should renew the resolution of our will to give ourself entirely to God, to seek His will always, and to fulfill His good pleasure above everything else. We should pray to find God, to remain near Him as friend with Friend. Let us ask Him humbly, but with gentle insistence, to teach us how to love Him as we will love Him one day in heaven. Just as human friendship is strengthened by the frequent meeting of friends, so divine friendship—charity—is strengthened in the same way; charity grows stronger in prayer, which is the friendly, loving meeting of the soul with God.


COLLOQUY

“O Lord, You teach me that without love even the most perfect gifts are as nothing, that charity is the most excellent way, for it leads directly to You. That is why I wish for no science but the science of love, and having given all the substance of my house for love, I count it as nothing. I understand so clearly that love alone can make me pleasing in Your sight, that my sole ambition is to acquire it.

“My occupation is to gather flowers, the flowers of love and sacrifice, and to offer them to You, my God, to give You pleasure. I wish to labor for Your love alone—with the sole aim of pleasing You, of consoling Your Sacred Heart, and of saving souls who will love You through eternity ” (T.C.J. St, 13 — Act of Oblation).

“O God, my love for You ought to be total, infinite in desire, because You will not give Yourself entirely to a soul unless it gives itself wholly to You. I must not cling to any attachment, nor admit even a single voluntary imperfection, nor refuse You anything. Grant that I may give myself to You in a continual, uninterrupted donation, moment by moment, seeking in all things Your greater glory, always trying to please You, always wanting Your will alone, doing each action with all my heart and with all my love.

“My love for You must be delicate. Help me to reach that exquisiteness and delicacy, that regard for details which You appreciate so much, which delights You.

“My love for You should be strong and generous, and prove itself in sacrifice, in seeking sacrifice in the offering and the smiling acceptance of suffering. O God, for love of You, I want to take advantage of the little opportunities so that I may be strong in the big ones” (Sr. Carmela of the Holy Spirit, O.C.D.).

257. FRATERNAL CHARITY

PRESENCE OF GOD - Grant, O Lord, that I may understand the depth of meaning in the precept of fraternal charity.


MEDITATION

I. Jesus has given us as the foundation of all law, not only the precept of the love of God, “the greatest and the first commandment,” but also the precept of the love of neighbor, and He expressly said that it is “ like” to the first (Mt 22,38.39). That the precept of the love of God should be the basis of all Christian life is easy to understand, but it is not so easy to see that the same holds true of the precept of fraternal charity. However, Jesus has bound these two commandments so closely that the one cannot subsist without the other. He did not say that all is based on the first commandment, that of love of God, but “on these two commandments [the love of God and of neighbor] dependeth the whole law and the prophets ” (ibid. 22,40). Why did He put the love of neighbor so close to the love of God as to make of it, with the latter, the one foundation of all Christianity? Because the virtue of fraternal charity is not love of the creature in itself and for itself,
but it is love of the creature “propter Deum,” that is, for God’s sake, because of its relation to God.

In other words, we must clearly understand that God commands us to love Him not only in Himself, but also in His rational creatures whom He has been pleased to create to His image and likeness. Just as a father wants to be loved and respected not only in his own person, but also in that of his children, so God wants to be loved in His creatures as well as in Himself, and He desires this to such an extent that He considers anything done to one of His creatures as done to Him. Jesus has said: “Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to Me” (ibid. 25,40). Fraternal charity is of great importance, because it is in reality an extension of our charity toward God, an extension which embraces all men in relation to God, their Creator and their Father. For this reason, the precept of the love of neighbor is inseparable from the precept of the love of God.


2. God is so insistent upon being loved in the neighbor that He makes this love the essential condition of our eternal salvation. When Jesus speaks to us of the last judgment, He gives no other reason for the justification of the good and the condemnation of the wicked than the doing of, or the omission of, works of mercy toward our neighbor. “Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Why? “For I was hungry, and you gave Me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me to drink... ” (ibid. 25,34.35). I was hungry in the poor, I thirsted in your neighbor. If it is very consoling to know that God considers works of charity done to our neighbor as done to Himself, and rewards them as such, it is a matter of serious reflection to know that He also considers failures in charity toward our neighbor as if done to Himself, and so will punish them accordingly. Jesus, who is the personification of the goodness and infinite mercy of our heavenly Father, does not hesitate to pronounce the sentence of eternal damnation against those who have not loved, or helped, or consoled their neighbor. Why? Because: “Amen I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to Me ” (ibid. 25,45). God requires the concrete proof of our love for Him to be shown in the way we behave toward our neighbor. We cannot delude ourselves into thinking that we love God if we do not love our fellow men, who, like us, are the living images of our heavenly Father.

What difference does it make if this image is sometimes disfigured by faults, by sin, or even by vices? It always remains the image of God which charity ought to make us recognize, venerate, and love in every man, regardless of his condition. We cannot be satisfied with an idealistic love for God. Our love must be realistic and actualized in our dealings with our neighbor: this is the unfailing proof of our love for God.



COLLOQUY

“O charity, you are as great as my God Himself, for God is Charity. You are so exalted that you reach the throne of the Blessed Trinity. There you enter the bosom of the eternal Father, and from the Father’s bosom, you go to the heart of the Incarnate Word, where you take your rest and are nourished. Thus the soul who possesses you seeks its nourishment and rest in God alone, after which it returns to earth, for you reach even to our neighbors, O charity, loving them not only as creatures, but as beings created by God to His own image and likeness. You do not stop at loving their bodies, that is, their exterior appearance, but you penetrate to the interior of their souls, which you love more than all else. You do not stop at God’s gifts, but soar to the Giver and love all men only in Him.

“O charity, you are so sublime that you unite us to God! You can do all things and in the Church you form a trinity, as it were, similar to the Blessed Trinity; because just as the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and all three are united and are one and the same Being, so, by your virtue, O charity, this union reaches us, because you unite the soul to God, and one soul to another; in this invisible way, you form in the Church a kind of trinity. He who possesses you, O charity, nourishes himself with God, to such a point that he becomes like God through grace and participation.

“O my God, give me such perfect charity that I may know how to yield to my neighbor, helping and relieving him in all his needs, weaknesses, and troubles. May I know how to have prudent compassion for the faults of others” (St. Mary Magdalen dei Pazzi).

258. THE MOTIVE FOR FRATERNAL CHARITY

PRESENCE OF GOD - O Lord, teach me how to love You in my neighbor and to love my neighbor in You and for You.


MEDITATION

1. There are not two virtues of charity, one the love of God and the other love of the neighbor; for the charity by which we love God and the neighbor is one and the same. We love God because He is infinitely lovable, and we love the neighbor because faith teaches us to recognize in him a reflection of the lovableness of God. The motive for fraternal charity is the same as the motive for loving God, as we must always love God either directly in Himself or indirectly in the neighbor. Because fraternal charity has God for its ultimate object and last end, it is identical with the theological virtue by which we love God. Certainly God holds the first place! To Him, the infinite Good, we owe absolute preference above all other loves. The love of God, however, includes love of the neighbor, so that we love him in and for God, that is, because of his relation to God, and because he belongs to God. “God is the motive for loving the neighbor,” says St. Thomas, “which proves that the act by which we love God is the same as that by which we love the neighbor.


Hence the virtue of charity does not stop at the love of God, but it also includes love of neighbor” (IIa I1#, q.25, a.1, co.). When one truly loves God, the neighbor is also loved, just as he is, in spite of his faults and the annoyance and trouble which he may sometimes cause; for instead of regarding these things, one looks much further and tries to see God in the brethren. With one’s glance fixed on Him, and because of Him (propter Deum), all are loved without distinction or restriction.

Such a soul readily understands the profound logic of the Apostle’s words: “ If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God whom he seeth not? And this commandment we have from God, that he who loveth God, love also his brother ” (1 Jn 4,20.21).


2. If I love my neighbor because he is congenial, renders me service or sympathizes with me, or because I enjoy his friendship, if 1 love him because of his fine qualities and pleasing manners, my love is merely human, and is not the love of charity. If I am good to my neighbor and help him because I am sorry for him or feel bound to him by human ties, my love may be called sympathy or philanthropy, but it cannot yet be called charity, because the characteristic of charity is to love one’s neighbor “propter Deum,” for God. My love becomes the virtue of charity only to the degree in which the love of God enters into it, only insofar as this love for my brethren is inspired by my love for God. The more my love is based on human motives alone—like congeniality, natural gifts, ties of blood—the more it is simply human love which has nothing of the merit and value of charity. “Love of neighbor is not meritorious if the neighbor is not loved because of God” (St. Thomas IIa Ila, q.27, a.8). This is what St. Paul meant when he said: “If I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor...and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing ” (1 Cor 13,3).

It is easy to deceive ourselves, thinking we have great charity because we love those who love us, because we are very thoughtful and full of attentions toward those who think as we do, or who are close to us, while, in reality, it is a question of purely natural love into which the love of God hardly enters. “If you love [only] them that love you,” Jesus said, “ what reward shall you have?... Do not also the heathens this?” (Mt 5,46.47). If I want my love for my neighbor to be charity, I must transcend the natural and contemplate my neighbor in God, loving him in relation to God and because of God. Only in this way will my love for my neighbor be an act of the theological virtue of charity, the same act with which I love God; only thus shall I fulfill the precept of fraternal charity.


COLLOQUY

“As You, O Ged, have created man to Your image and likeness, so You have commanded us to love men with a love similar to that due to Your divinity. The reason why we love You, O Lord, is Your sovereignly high and infinite goodness, and the reason why we love men is because they have all been created to Your image and likeness, so that we love them as holy, living images of Your divinity.

“The same charity with which we love You, O Lord, is the source of the acts with which we love our neighbor. One same love holds for You, my God, as for our neighbor; it elevates us to the union of our spirit with You, my God, and it brings us back to loving society with our neighbor, but in such a way that we love him because he is created to Your image and likeness, created to share in Your divine goodness, to participate in Your grace and enjoy Your glory.

“To love our neighbor with the love of charity is to love You, my God, in man, and man in You; it is to love You alone for the love of Yourself, and to love creatures for love of You.

“O God of goodness! When we look at our neighbor created to Your image and likeness, should we not say one to another : See how much this person resembles the Creator? Should we not embrace him, caress him, and weep with love over him? Should we not give him many blessings? And why? For love of him? No, certainly not, for we do not know whether he, of himself, is worthy of love or of hatred. Then why? For love of You, O Lord, who created him to Your image and likeness, and made him capable of participating in Your goodness, grace, and glory. Therefore, O Love Divine, You have not only commanded us many times to love our neighbor, but You Yourself instill this love in our hearts ” (St. Francis de Sales).