II — THE MOTIVE OF FRATERNAL CHARITY

Presence of God. — O Lord, teach me 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 for loving God and another for loving neighbor, but one single virtue with which we love God and neighbor. We love God because of his infinite lovableness, and we love neighbor because faith makes us recognize in him a reflection of God’s lovableness. The motive of fraternal charity is therefore the same motive as charity toward God: it is always a matter of loving God, either immediately in Himself or mediately in neighbor. Having therefore God as object and ultimate motive, fraternal charity is a virtue identical with the theological virtue by which we love God. Certainly God has first place: to Him, infinite Good, we must give absolute preference above every neighbor. But love of neighbor also enters into love toward God, insofar as we love neighbor in God and for God, that is, because of his relations with God, his belonging to God. “The reason for loving neighbor is God,” teaches St. Thomas, “... whence it is clear that the act by which God is loved is the same as that by which neighbor is loved. And therefore the virtue of charity extends not only to love of God but also to love of neighbor” (II-II, q. 25, a. 1). When a soul truly loves God, it also knows how to love neighbor, and to love him as he is, despite his defects, despite the annoyance and even the displeasures he may at times cause, because, far from stopping to consider all this, it goes much farther: it presses on to seek God in its brethren; in God it fixes its gaze, and propter Deum, because of God, it loves all without distinctions, without restrictions.

Such a soul has no need of long reasonings to understand the rigorous logic of the Apostle’s objection: “If anyone says ‘I love God’ and hates his brother, he is a liar.” Rather, it intuits this by a kind of supernatural instinct, an intuition that makes it embrace the whole scope of the commandment of charity: “And this commandment we have from God: that he who loves God should also love his brother” (1 Jn. 4:20-21).

2 — If I love my neighbor because he is pleasing to me, because he renders me services or benefits me, because his friendship comforts me; if I love him for his good qualities, for his amiable and pleasant manner, mine is human love and is not at all love of charity. If I am benevolent toward neighbor, if I help him because he moves me to compassion, because I feel bound to him by duties of human solidarity, my love may be called sympathy or philanthropy, but it cannot yet be called charity, whose characteristic is to love neighbor propter Deum. My love is a virtue of charity only to the extent that love of God enters into play between me and neighbor, only to the extent that my love for my brothers is inspired by love for God. The more my love rests solely on human motives — such as sympathy, natural gifts, blood ties, and so forth — the more it is simple human love, which has in no way the merit and value of charity. “Love of neighbor is not meritorious except because neighbor is loved for God’s sake” (St. Thomas, II-II, q. 27, a. 8). Precisely in this sense St. Paul said: “If I should distribute all I have to feed the poor... and have not love, it profits me nothing” (1 Cor. 13:3).

It is easy to delude ourselves into thinking we have much charity because we love those who love us, because we are full of attentions and kindnesses toward those who think as we do, who stand with us; and yet this is only simple human love in which love of God does not enter at all. “If you love those who love you,” Jesus said, “what reward do you deserve?... Do not even the pagans do the same?” (Mt. 5:46-47). If I want my love for neighbor to be charity, I must rise much higher: I must consider neighbor in God; I must love neighbor in relation to God, for God’s sake. Only thus will my love for neighbor be an act of the theological virtue of charity, the same act by which I love God, and only thus will I fulfill the precept of fraternal charity.

Colloquy

“As You, O God, have created man in your image and likeness, so You have commanded us to love men with a love similar to that owed to your divinity. The reason why we love You, O Lord, is your sovereignly supreme and infinite goodness; and the reason why we love men is that all have been created in your image and likeness, so that we love them as most holy and living images of your divinity.

“Behold, then, that this same charity with which we love You, O Lord, is the source of the acts by which we love neighbor. One and the same love extends to You, my God, and to neighbor; it raises us to the union of our spirit with You and leads us back to loving society with neighbors, yet in such a way that we love neighbor insofar as he is created in your image and likeness, created to communicate with your divine goodness, to participate in your grace, and to enjoy your glory.

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

“Ah, good God! On seeing our neighbor created in your image and likeness, should we not say to one another: look how this creature resembles the Creator? Should we not embrace him, caress him, and weep with love over him? Should we not give him countless blessings? And why? For love of him? No, certainly, because we do not know whether in himself he is worthy of love or of hatred. Why, then? For love of You, O Lord, who formed him in your image and likeness, and thus made him capable of participating in your goodness in grace and glory. Therefore, O divine love, not only do You command love of neighbor many times, but You Yourself produce and infuse it into our hearts” (cf. St. Francis de Sales).