Chapter 5. The Virtue of Charity

Hope confoundeth not, because the charity of God is pot «d forth la our hearts by the Holy Ghost, Who is given unto u«. ROMANI T. 5.

have already seen what is the confidence of hope, and how it is founded upon the knowledge of the goodness of God seen by the supernatural light of faith; and we have seen also that the supernatural light of faith causes to spring up in the heart a desire to obtain our chief good, which is our eternal bliss. We further saw how with the knowledge of that goodness there comes also a personal experience of it. As we trust in God, so He manifests His personal goodness to us.

Saint Paul then goes on to say that "hope confoundeth not." Now the word "confound" signifies does not make ashamed, because it does not disappoint. Hope shall never be baffled of its expectation, shall njver fail of obtaining its desires, because God is faithful, and God will keep His promise. Saint Paul then goes on to give the reason. He says: " Hope confoundeth not, because the charity of God is poured forth into our hearts by the Holy Ghost" — that is, the charity, or the love of God towards us, from which springs our love to Him again. B it first, it is the con- (100)

^s of the love of God to us that i.s pou ed out into our hearts by the Holy Ghost Who is given to us: and ther. the virtue of charity.

N"ow oar next subject in order is chanty, the third of the three theological virtues which are given to us in our Baptism.

Hope, as I have f,aid, springs from faith, and charity springs from faith and hope together. "Now all charity is love; but all love is not charity. The word " love" is very much wider than the word " charity:" and there are many kinds of love.

First, there is the love of nature; the soul of man naturally desires that which is for its good and for its happiness. It is the natural hunger and thirst of the mind or the soul for that which is for its good. This is the lowest form of it.

Secondly, there is a supernatural love, which alone is properly called charity. ISTow the love of charity means the love of appreciation. The word caritas, or " charity," means the value or the price we set upon anything. People, because they prize each other or appreciate each other, are dear to one another.

Thirdly, there is the love of predilection; that is, a love of selection or choice, when by affinity of character, or by any special reason, we are drawn towards some persons before others.

And lastly, there is the love of friendship. Now the love of friendship is the highest, the purest, and the most unselfish, and therefore the most perfect form of love.

These four kinds of love are in every one of as; if, that is, we be in the state of grace. There is in every one who is united with God the love of nature, which, as I have shown, is the love of hope, or the desire of God. The love of charity, too, is in all those vrho receive the Holy Ghost. So also is the love of predilection or of choice, with which we love God, Who has loved us from all eternity, and has chosen us for Himself. As He loves us so we love Him again, choosing Him out of all things, and loving Him even better than life itself. And, finally, there is in all who are in grace the love of friendship, which is the special union of the soul with God by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. This it is that constitutes the love and confidence of His servants in this life. I am now going to speak only of this last, namely, the love of friendship; for that is the charity which is properly and specifically understood when we speak of being in the love of God and of our neighbor. The definition, then, of charity is this: it is the love of friendship, by which we will and desire for God all good things for His own sake, and because of His infinite perfections. Now every word of this definition has its force. The charity of which I speak is distinct from the love which springs from hope in this, that we there love God for our own sakes, and for the good that He bestows on us; but in this charity of friendship we love God for His own sake, and we desire all good and all glory to Him. It is an unselfish love; for just as perfect hope casts out fear, so perfect charity casts out self. In the proportion in which self is mixed with our charity, our love of God is not pure; it is so far selfish, it is mercenary, it partakes of the love of hirelings. But in the proportion in which charity is purified and self is cast out, our love for God is pure; and being pure, it wills and desires all glory and all good things for God, and for the sake of God. And what are those good things that we will to Him? We ask them every day in the Lord's Prayer: " Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name." The hallowing of the name of God is that He may be known, and worshiped, and loved, and served, and honored by all His creatures. It is a desire that the grace of God be poured upon all — that an increase of glory may be given to God purely for His own sake. " Thy kingdom come." That is, may the manifestation of the glory of God, the accomplishment of His will — may aD the good that man can do and creatures can accomplish — be done according to His will, and accomplished for His sake. " Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." That is, as Thou art purely glorified in heaven, purely loved by all those that are about Thy Throne, so raayst Thou beloved and glorified upon earth. This is the love of friendship. We will now examine the words of the text, and we shall see precisely what it intends. Saint Paul says: tl The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost." Now the Holy Ghost ia the third Person of the ever-blessed Trinity. We receive, then, as a gift the indwelling of the third Person of the ever-blessed Trinity. The Holy Ghost Himself comes to dwell in our hearts. You will read this all through the New Testament. If there be one thing more marvelous than another, it is that we Christians and Catholics, with the light of faith in our hearts, and with the Holy Scriptures in our hands, go on sometimes half through our lives, some almost thr >ugli.the v.liolo of life, speaking of the Father and of the Son, and arc yet half silent of the Holy Ghost We read the New Testament, and especially the Epistles of Saint Paul to the Ephesians and the Epistle of Saint John, and we fail to see this: that the grace and the glory of Christians, as distinct from all others that have ever received the grace of God before or since the corning of our Lord, consists chiefly in this one thing, that we are made the temples of God, and that God the Holy Ghost dwells in ns; that » he Holy Ghost has come to us as He never came before from the beginning of the world until the day of Pentecost. Wheresoever He is, there is, too, the charity of God. These are two distinct things. There is a distinction to be made between the Person of the Holy Ghost and the charity which He gives, as there is between the sun and the light and the heat of the sun. The sun in the sky is always the fountain of light and heat. But the light and the heat are not always with us, for they may be intercepted by the clouds. Moreover, the light and the heat are emanations from the sun; they are not the sun; they do not constitute its boing or its existence; they flow from the fullness and the power of light which radiates from the sun. So it is with God the Holy Ghost. He is the centre of light and love: but the light and love are not the Holy Ghost, they are the action of the Holy Ghost upon the soul; and therefore there is a distinction to be drawn between the Uncreated Charity of God, Who is given to us, and the created charity of God, which is a grace infused into the soul. The Uncreated Charity of God is the Holy Ghost Himself. The Holy Gho* therefore peisonally dwells in the heart of those who are in the state of graoe, and unites Himself to them. But the created charity of God is, as I have said, like the sun's light and heat. Wheresoever the sun is, there, by the action of its light and heat, it gives life and form, and perfection and fruitfulness, and maturity, and ripeness to all things. These qualities and perfections are deposited, as it were, on the face of the earth; they become the possession and the properties of the earth and of the trees and fruits throughout the world. So it is when the Holy Gliost is in the soul. The love of God and of our neighbor is like the ripeness and the fruitful-ness which the sun bestows upon the works of creation. These are all infused into the soul, and are left abiding in the soul as qualities and properties and perfections belonging to it. It is by that created grace that the soul loves God with all its mind and all its strength, and its neighbor as itself. Observe well the meaning of these last words We are bound to love ourselves. Self-love, which is the curse of mankind, is the abuse and perversion of that love of self which is a divine law. Now what is that legitimate love of self? It is this: God made me, and I am a creature of God, and therefore I belong to Him. I am not my own; I have no rights over myself, except only those which God gives me. For instance, I have no right over my own life. I cannot take my own life without committing an act of high treason against God. A suicide is a self-murderer; he breaks the second great law of God. The first is to love God above all things; the next is that we love ourselves. The man who destroys his own life breaks the second great commandment of God. It is with 5* amazement and, I must say, a kind of horror, that within the last week, within this Christian land of England, in this enlightened nineteenth century, I have seen cultivated men, men of intellect, men of high attainments, who have been defending in public the lawfulness of suicide. It is a rising again of one of the darkest forms of heathenism. As the thermometer, when you fix the register, marks what the degree of cold has been in the night, so this one fact marks to me the state of apostasy into which some men in England have fallen. They nave fallen from the revelation of Jesus Christ; aye, I will go further, from the light of nature. As we have no rights over ourselves, and are bound to love ourselvea with a rational love — that is, with the love of knowledge, the knowledge that God has made us; and according to the laws which He has imposed upon our nature, so we are also bound to love our neighbor as ourselves; that is to say, he also is a creature of God, he is the property and possession of God, just as I am, and I am bound to pay to him the same respect, the same love, and the same honor that I am bound to pay to myself. If I see that his soul can be saved by the loss of my temporal life, the law of charity prompts me to lose it, If I were to see that his temporal life could be saved by the exposure of my own, and even by the loss of my own, the law of charity bids me, if it does not bind me, to risk it. If the risk of my own life were necessary to procure him some great and signal good, charity would counsel me even to risk my life for it. But there is one thing that I may not risk, neither to gain any temporal good for myself nor to gain any temporal good for another — I may not risk my spiritual life and my eternal salvation. The rational law of love for myself there cornea in to limit my freedom. And though I may die for my neighbor to save his soul, or even his life — the life of the body — I may not risk my spiritual life or my salvation for anything whatsoever. This, then, is the nature of charity.

Here, therefore, we see the connection between charity and the sanctification of the soul. I must touch this very briefly, and then come to the practical application of what has been iaid.

You are well aware that the sanctification or holiness of the soul means the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God, raising and conforming it to the perfection for which it was created. Charity, or love, is only one part of its perfection; but wheresoever the Holy Ghost is, He bestows another gift — sanctity as well as charity. These two come and go together; they flow from the same fountain, and run in the same channel. They are therefore inseparable. A man that is not holy does not love God or his neighbor; and a man that does not love God or his neighbor is not holy. Sanctity and charity cannot be put asunder. Moreover, charity is the greatest of all the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Saint Paul says: " There remaineth these three — faith, hope, and charity. But the greater of these is cMirity."* And that becaiu* charity makes faith and hope perfect, and they are neither of them perfect without it. And, next, charity unites the soul with God. $ either faith nor hope does this. Again, charity is God Himself. Faith and hope are not God, but God is charity. Furthermore, charity is our eternal perfection and bliss; but * 1 Cor. xiii. 1*.

UH THE VIRTUE OF CHARITY.

there wiL be neither faith nor hope in eternity; foi faith will have passed into vision, and hope will have passed into fruition. There will only remain for ever chanty made perfect. And, again, Saint Paul says that charity is " the bond of perfection; "* that is to say, Jike as a golden thread sustains a string of pearls, and runs through them all, or as a clasp of gold holds a vestment together, so all the graces of the Holy Ghost, which constitute the sanctification of the soul, are sustained and completed and clasped together by charity You remember in that same thirteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians how Saint Paul says, " Charity is patient, is kind, is not ambitious, is not puffed up; believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; rejoiceth not in evil, but rejoiceth in the truth."f This is his description of perfect charity; and charity is the crown, or I may say the circle, of glory which keeps all these things in their place. And thus, as I have said, charity is not only the perfection of sanctity in this world, but charity is the bliss of the soul in eternity, and that because without charity we could not see God, and without the vision of God we could not be blessed; and in eternity it is through charity that we shall see God. It is by the light of faith changed into the light of glory that the soul will receive the faculty or the eye whereby to see God. It will receive also the perfection of love or of the heart whereby to love God. It is the vision of God, and the union of the soul through charity with God, which will constitute its eternal bliss.

Let us, then, see what is its connection with QUI sanctification, and what is its connection with our future * Col. iii. 18. f 1 Cor. xiii. 4-6.

bliss The Council of Florence has defined that the blessedness of the soul in eternity will be according to the measure of its merits in this world; and its merits ir this world are in the measure of its charity. They that have loved much shall be the most glorified, and therefore the most blessed. They that have loved least shall be the least glorified and the least blessed. The measure of our charity will be the measure of our eternal bliss.

1. Learn, then, some practical truths from this. The first is, that throughout our whole life our charity ought to be ever on the increase, and, if increased, so will be our bliss in eternity.

The charity which was infused into us in our Baptism, compared with the love of eternity, was as the smoking flax to the ardor of the sun. The fire was there, yet it was but the first rising of a flame; but that faint beginning may be enlarged, and fed, and nourished until it shall be like the flame of a seraph before the Throne. This lifelong increase of charity in the soul is wrought in two ways: first, by acquisition on our part; and, next, by gift and infusion on God's part. The acquisition on our part is this: everything we do in the motive of charity brings an increase of charity. Not only the splendid alms, and the great labors, and the heroic sufferings of apostles and martyrs, but e^ery little act of Christian love, so minute and so unseen that no one but our Heavenly Father, Who seeth in secret, is witness of it, brings a measured increase of love. Charity has the power of turning everything we do all day long, and in every moment of the day, to gold. If we have the motive of charitj in our heart, our whole commonplace life will be laying up a weight of glory and an eternal multitude of sweetness and of bliss.

If you cannot do great things for God, at least you may have great desires. Desire His love and desire to grow in charity. The very desire will increase the love that is in you. Every exercise of it and every the least action will make it to grow more. Like as the use of the arm develops its muscle and its power, so with charity. And, once more, even the habitual state of the heart will gain grace for you. As you walk in the streets you see the men of this world hurrying to and fro, with countenances lowering, and lined, and marked, I may say scarred, with anxiety, and the worldliiiess of their minds. You may see men who, from ambition, or from jealousy, or from many passions, have countenances which are furrowed deep by care. On the other hand, you will see some whose countenances are always bright, calm, and kindly. What makes the difference? The men I first described are living for this world. They are harsh, churlish, disappointed, and confounded. Their hopes betray them. Their confidence comes to naught, and their labor is turned to bitterness. What they are within they are without. Countenance is transparent, and the soul shines through. And they who are calm and bright have a gentle expression: why is it so? Because things that are bright, and calm, and sweet, and beautiful, God and His goodness and the world to come, the hopes which bear them up, the trust which they know can never fail — these diffuse over their whole mind and heart the brightness and sweetness of the realities which are ever before their sight. Even in the pelting of the stones, Stephen's face shone, for heaven wai open to him. If any man will live in the love of God, the love that is in him will be multiplied. I will give you a practical test to try yourselves. What are your first dispositions towards everybody around you? What are your first thoughts about them? Are they gentle and kindly, or censorious and critical? Is it an effort to you to be charitable, or is it an effort to you to be severe? If the habitual countenance, so to say, of your heart is charitable, and thoughts of severity are acts of second thought constrained by necessity, not prompted by your habitual state, then you are living in the love of God and your neighbor. But if your habitual state, and what I will call the countenance of your heart, is contracted, and clouded, and churlish, if it is an effort to you, if it needs deliberation, so that you must put a force upon yourself before you can act or speak charitably to others, then your habitual state can hardly be one of the love of God and of your neighbor. If you live in mutual kindness with all about you, the love of God will be abundantly poured into your hearts; it will be given to you as a reward, and as an increase of grace for your fidelity. " To him that hath shall be given." All such shall have a special blessing in their Communions. They put their lips to the source; they draw charity from the Holy Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and from His Sacred Heart, the very fountain of charity. To them it will be always open. They are the disciples of the Sacred Heart; and where the Sacred Heart of Jestu is, there is all grace

2. But as jour charity may be increased all through your life, so your charity may be lost in one moment of time. And it may be lost in two ways. Any act of mortal sin, of any kind whatsoever, at once breaks friendship with God; and when the friendship of God is broken, the sanctifying grace of the Holy Ghost departs. So a. so any mortal sins against charity, any specific sins against the specific grace of charity, will destroy it. For instance, an unjust action whereby yon wrong a neighbor — if it be done with deliberation or malice-— destroys the love of your neighbor, and therefore the love of God, for they come and go together. Again, to bear false witness against your neighbor, or wilfully to strike a murderous blow at his reputation, destroys the love you owe to him, and with it the love of God. In like manner detraction, though it may not amount to bearing false witness, but the fretting, nibbling, gnawing, pertinacious filing away of the fair name of your neighbor — this, too, destroys, little. by little, the charity of God. And more; it is not only the committing detraction ourselves, but the permitting others to commit it — that thirsty pricking of the ear which is curious to listen, and so tempts another to speak evil. To listen to detraction is as much an act of detraction as to speak it.

And, therefore, if in any of these ways we wilfully sin against charity, we shall certainly lose it. Hear the words of the Holy Ghost: " We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren He that loveth not abideth in death. If any man loves not his brother, he is a murderer; and you know that no murderer hath eternal life. Tf a man say, 1 love

God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for if he love not his brother whom he hatli seen, how shall he love God Whom lie hath not seen?"*

3. And, further, let us bear in mind that, charity once lost, it is beyond the power of the human will to regain it. No will of man can restore that which the will of God alone at first bestowed. They who have lost the love of God are dead before God. They abide in spiritual death, and there is no voice that can call them out of that spiritual death but the voice of the Son of God. Until the voice which called Lazarus from the grave shall say, " I absolve thee from all thy sins," the love of God and the life of the soul is not in them. And while the soul is dead, all its works are dead. They are like the fruits that tradition says grew upon the trees about the cities of the plain and on the shores of the Dead Sea — fair to the eye without, but full of ashes. Such are the actions of a man who i* out of the love of God and of his neighbor. The charity of God is a gift of God not due to nature; a free, sovereign grace bestowed through the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. It was not due even to His creatures in a state of innocence — it was a royal gift superadded to their natural perfection. How much less is it due to sinners, who, having received it, have again lost it by their wilful sin? Compare the Christian world with the heathen world around you. The heathen world ia dead, because the love of God is not in it. What waa it that raised the Christian world from that state of death? The charity of God, which was poured out upon it by the Holy Ghost. At this moment, the hea *1 8. John Hi. 14, 15; iv. 20.

then world is dead before God; and multitudes withm the visible Church of God are twice dead. The fac«i of Christendom is like the vision of the Prophet Ezekiel.

The valley is covered with the bones of the dead; a multitude beyond all count; and behold " they are dry," " very dry," utterly dead, and so dead that no voice of man, no will of man, could give them life. Even the voice of the prophet had no power until the spirit of life from the four winds — that is, from heaven and from the God of heaven — came and breathed upon the slain; not till then did they stand upon their feet and live. God only, Who at the first gave life, can give it back again; and He has ordained a special sacrament whereby we may be restored to charity. And, until we have heard the words of absolution, and have received from the Holy Ghost into our hearts once more the infusion of sanctifying grace, with which charity ia inseparably linked — until our Heavenly Father has fallen upon the neck of the prodigal, and has once more given us the kiss of peace — no soul which has lost charity can be restored to the friendship of God. There are some men who, having turned their back upon Him, will not return. They live obstinately on the northern side of the mountain, where there is perpetual rime and mist, frost and snow, cold winds and sunless skies. They wilfully keep out of the light and love of God, and that because they are conscious of unrepented sins or of sins they will not forsake. " This is the judgment: because the light is come into the world, and men loved dark* ness rather than light, for their works were evil. For every man that doeth evil hateth the light, and coraeth not to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved."* uGod is light, and in Him there is no darkness." " If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in iarkness, we lie, and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light as He also is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the Blood of Jesua Christ His Son cleanse th us from all sin."f

Learn, then, to know the love of God in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is the Book of Life — open to all — easily to be read. Take that Book of Life and read it — every page. It is written within and without with the pledges and the promises of God's personal love for you. They only in the sight of God are great who have a great charity. Kings, emperors, princes, statesmen, orators, men of science, are but as the dust of the earth compared with the soul that is filled with the love of God. What made the Apostles, and the Evangelists, and the Martyrs, and the followers of Jesus Christ to be kings, and priests, and princes in the Kingdom of God? The love of God and their neighbor. And what is the Kingdom of God upon earth? The reign of love, the charity of God to man and of man to his fellow. The H»ly Catholic Church, the mystical Body of Jesus Christ, is called by the name of charity. It is the uncreated charity of God visibly incorporated. You §ay it in your baptismal creed: " I believe in the Holy Ghost, in the Holy Catholic Church." u There is one body and one spirit." It is one, because where there is charity there are no divisions. It is He Who made men to be of one mind in one house, when it was shaken by the mighty wind coming and illuminated by the * S. John iii. 19, 20 f 1 S. Jolin i 5, 7.

IK> THE V1HTUE OF CHARITY.

tongues of fire. There is a divine unanimity throughout the Universal Church binding it together, because the love of God is its light. The world, with its multitudinous contentions, wars against the charity of God. But no blow struck at it can destroy its life. Saint Hilary says of the Passion of our Divine Master, that they wounded His humanity, but the Godhead they could not reach. The blows that were struck at Hi in passed harmless through his Godhead, as a sword passes through a flame. No weapon can cut it asunder. So is the Church of God imperishable, So all they who have the love of God in them shall never perish. The gates of hell cannot prevail against them. Saint Paul says: " Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that shall condemn? It is Christ that died, yea, rather Who is risen again, Who is at the right hand of God. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?... I am persuaded that neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor depth, nor height, nor any other creature, shall separate us from the love of God, which is Christ Jesus our Lord."*

•Bom.viii.88, W