X — BEAR ONE ANOTHER’S BURDENS

Presence of God. — Give me, O Lord, a charity attentive and prompt to others’ needs, a charity that for love of You may know how to make itself all things to all.

Meditation

1 — Every man carries his burden, more or less heavy: it is the burden of his physical and moral weaknesses, the load of his duties, responsibilities, labors, difficulties that weigh on his shoulders; and every man feels the need of a friendly hand to help him sustain his burden. This hand must be offered by fraternal charity, which for love of God knows how to make itself all things to all. “Bear one another’s burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ,” exhorts St. Paul (Gal. 6:2). The Christian knows he is not isolated, but a member of one body, the Mystical Body of Christ: “we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Rom. 12:5). This awareness of his solidarity with his brethren means that the Christian does not live enclosed in the narrow circle of personal interests, but has a heart open to others’ interests and needs. The mystery of our incorporation into Christ is not only an individual fact, but by its nature a social fact: to be inserted in Christ through grace and charity entails our reciprocal insertion among brothers and sisters, in a way similar to branches of the same vine, which, being inserted in one trunk, come to be closely joined one to another, so that they live, grow, and develop together. As love for Christ is the vital expression of our union with Him, and the deeper this union becomes, the more love grows, so fraternal charity is the vital expression of our reciprocal union with brethren in Christ, to the point that if this charity were not living and operative, we would have to say that our union in Christ and with Christ is very weak or perhaps altogether null. If charity and grace unite us to Christ in such intimate and vital relations, the necessity of living this union is evident: first with Him, our Head, but then also with brethren, sharers in our insertion into Christ. Hence that supernatural sympathy that should make of us one heart and one soul, ready to suffer and labor for one another, ready in mutual help and reciprocal support. “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15), says the Apostle, which means sharing others’ joys, sorrows, labors, worries as if they were our own. And in fact they are ours, because they are joys, sorrows, labors, worries of that one Mystical Body of Christ to which we belong and which therefore is ours.

2 — To bear one another’s burdens also means to bear serenely and kindly others’ defects, inevitable consequences of every man’s limitations. The Imitation of Christ warns: “Those defects which a man cannot correct in himself and in others, he must bear patiently until God shall dispose otherwise” (I, 16, 1). In the last months of her life St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus wrote: “How well I now understand that true charity consists in bearing all neighbor’s defects, in not being astonished at his weaknesses, and in being edified by his least acts of virtue” (St. 9).

Not without reason does charity “bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things” (1 Cor. 13:7). Charity always believes in others’ good will, even if mixed with defects; it always hopes in that good it can discern in every creature, even if clouded by many deficiencies; and, what matters most, it endures all, finding nothing ever too burdensome. To bear, as the etymology of the word says, means to place oneself underneath to carry a weight. So exactly charity feels the need to bend down with love to take upon itself others’ burdens, and especially those burdens that everyone avoids because of their unpleasantness. St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus notes that certain persons are left aside because of their natural imperfections, such as lack of judgment, of education, and the touchiness of their character: “I know well,” says the saint, “that such illnesses are chronic and without hope of cure... and yet I must seek the company of these sisters and toward them fulfill the office of the good Samaritan” (cf. St. 10). Here is charity which, instead of fleeing, goes to meet persons who suffer from their natural and moral imperfections and takes care of them with so much love as not to let it appear at all that this merciful office costs it, that those defects are bothersome. Charity suffers all things, bears all things with an amiable and serene countenance, never showing itself annoyed or weighed down by the burdens it carries.

Colloquy

“O Lord, teach me to love my neighbor with all the breadth of my heart, not being content to love him as myself, but more than myself, in order to fulfill your precept: ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’ As You, O Lord, have always preferred us to Yourself, and still do so each time we receive You in the Most Blessed Sacrament by making Yourself our food, so You want us to have for one another so great a love that we always prefer our neighbor to ourselves. And as You have done all You could for us except sinning — since You could not and should not do it — so You want us to do all we can for one another, except sin. Grant, then, O Lord, that, with every offense against You excluded, my love for neighbor may be so firm, cordial, and solid that I never refuse to do or to suffer anything for him. Teach me to love him with deeds, procuring for him all the good I can for soul as for body, praying for him, serving him cordially when occasion presents itself; since if my love consisted only in fine words it would be very little and would not be loving neighbor as You have loved us. But to reach perfection in love it is not enough that I employ myself for my neighbor; I must also let myself be employed according to his will and in the way that pleases him, without making any resistance. Precisely in this I shall gain greater merit, for in this consists the supreme degree of self-denial” (cf. St. Francis de Sales).