The Priest at Prayer, June 28

The Third Part - Vices and Virtues

CHARITY (or the Love of God)

First Meditation - General Motives

I. What is charity? A supernatural habit of the mind whereby we love God above all things for His own sake, and ourselves and our neighbour for Him.

It is a theological virtue like the two previous ones, but higher than they, and the only eternal one of the three. Faith and hope will take us as far as the threshold of eternity, but when we actually enter it they will have fallen away. Only of charity St. Paul has said: charity never falls away, never dies; it is eternal, like God Himself, like the Holy Spirit who pours it into our hearts; and of such surpassing excellence that only the Divine Spirit can infuse it; of a quality that no human force or even the strength of the seraphim, the spirits of love, can impart it to us.

It directs man's most rebellious faculty, his rational appetite, to his final goal. It elevates a man's free will above all desirable things of earth and beyond every creature visible and invisible of the universe, to fix it securely on God, the Supreme Good. It is the last word in human perfection, even now: vinculum perfectionis. (Colos. iii, 14) It is, in a sense, the possession here below of the Sovereign Good, if not in the fulness of union as in heaven, intentionally and affectively, which is the only union possible to us while we are way­farers.

O God, my only Good, do I possess this glorious supernatural endowment? Is my mind and my heart a temple, here and now, of Thy Spirit? Dost Thou at this moment keep my inconstant will bound fast to Thee by that perfect bond, that bond so gentle and delightful and strong?

II. Even supposing - an impossible supposition, of course - that every virtue were enshrined in my soul, my whole existence a most fertile soil and limitless source of heroism, if I lack charity, nihil mihi prodest, nihil sum: it would avail me nothing, I should count for nothing. (Cor. xiii, 3)

Charity is necessary - necessitate medii - for my justi­fication and salvation. Who does not love God is in sin. So it is not to be thought a mere flash from a heart on fire when St. Paul exclaims:

"If there is anyone who has no love for the Lord, let him be held accursed - anathema sit!" (1 Cor. xvi, 22)

It is but God's irrevocable statement. Whoever does not love God remains apart and severed from God; whoever appears before the Judgement seat of God without the cloth-of-gold garment of divine love will have his part and lot with the hypocrites in the unquenchable fire.

O God, let the solemn, imperative, and burning proclamation which accompanied the issuing of the great precept of love on Mount Sinai serve to impel my entry into the kingdom of those that love thee.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength and with thy whole mind (Deut. vi, 5):

for this is the greatest and the first commandment (Matt. xxii, 37).

Or, as St. Thomas of Villanova says:

"Love the Lord your God, at least because He is yours. You love your field and your clothing, because they belong to you, they are yours. Then, why not love God who is also yours? Of all that is yours, will God alone be unworthy of love?"

III. The love of God is the royal road leading to God, the shortest, the quickest, or rather, the only way of approach to union with God.

Thus St. Paul devotes a long and beautiful chapter (1 Cor. xii) to a consideration of the various charismatic gifts and graces - gratiae gratis datae - which attracted so many souls in those early Christian centuries to the Fold of the Divine Redeemer: prophecy, the gift of healing, of tongues, of mind­reading, etc., but he concludes with these words:

"Prize the best gifts of heaven; meanwhile, I can show you a way which is better than any other." (1 Cor. xii, 41)

and that better way is no other than charity, the soul of every other virtue, the life and value of every good work, to which he devotes the most beautiful of all his writings, chapter thirteen of the same Epistle.

The act of least outward significance, for instance, to give someone a drink of water, if done out of super­natural charity is of greater value in the sight of the
Supreme Judge than the tortures of a St. Laurence if endured without charity.

And I, poor blind soul, how often I have tormented myself hunting after elaborate ways and means of spiritual perfection, looking out for byways and unbeaten tracks, and meanwhile, perhaps, bypassing the shortest and easiest and most satisfying route: the love of God.

IV.

"Wilt thou not learn to love the Lord thy God, and obey him, and keep close to his side? Thou hast no life, no hope of long continuance, but in him." (Deut. xxx, 20)

Even on earth, where the senses crave for satisfac­tion with drunken fury: even here, my happiness and my life is to love the Lord my God and to keep closely united to Him. Surely experience has given me a taste of this. And I know what befalls the reckless soul who separates from God expecting to find something better!

As St. Augustine says in his Confessions:

"My soul lay down among creatures, seeking sweet repose; she tossed from one side to another . . . but found the bed hard and unbearable; because Thou alone, Lord, art rest. Tu solus, Domine, requies."

"Repose and sweetness; because the day my soul loved Thee, remained in Thy Presence, and dwelt within Thee, she was like a bee in its honey­comb cell, seeing nought, touching nought, tasting nought but honey and peace and rest." (Bk. VI, chap. xvi)

Resolutions
1. Intimately convinced that the charity which unites me to God is far superior to mercy and any other virtue - because nothing is higher and more perfect than union with the Supreme Being, the Source of all that is - and that such close union with God is the exclusive outcome of true interior love, I resolve to train myself to make frequent and ardent acts of affective charity every day, rejoicing and finding delight in God's infinite Goodness, and thanking Him in terms such as those of the Gloria in excelsis Deo: Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam; and fostering a keen desire that all intelli­gent and free-willed creatures should join with me in this same praise and thanksgiving for all eternity.

2. I shall, by God's mercy, remain always in the state of sanctifying grace, or I shall do my utmost to recover it as soon as I have lost it, so that God may have some regard for my desire and praise, which from sinful lips would not be a handsome tribute.
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Adapted from The Priest at Prayer
by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, C.M. (© 1954)
Translated by B.T. Buckley, C.M.

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