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Charity

Related Topics: Humility | Simplicity

 

Selection of virtues:

 

Introduction to the Devout Life, 3:1: The queen of the bees never goes to the fields without being accompanied by her little subjects. Similarly charity never enters a heart without finding a lodging there for itself as well as for a retinue of other virtues which it exercises and sets to work as a captain does his soldiers.

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Humility and Charity are the master-ropes: all others are attached to them

 

Letter to Madame de Chantal: Humility and charity are the master ropes; all the others are attached to them.  We need only hold on to these two: one is at the very bottom and the other at the very top.  The preservation of the whole building depends on its foundation and its roof.  We do not encounter much difficulty in practising other virtues if we keep our heart bound to the practice of these two.  They are the mother virtues, and the others follow them the way little chicks follow the mother hen. 

 

True simplicity is always good and agreeable to God

 

Letter to Madame de Chantal, on charity and humility: True simplicity is always good and agreeable to God.  I see that all the seasons of the year meet in your soul, that sometimes you feel the winter; on the morrow dryness, distractions, disgust, troubles, and weariness; sometimes the dews of May, with the perfume of holy flowers; sometimes the ardours of desire to please our good God.  There remains only autumn, of whose fruit, as you say, you do not see much. 

 

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When charity enters a heart it brings with it all the other virtues or divine gifts.  However, we must not practise them all at once, but discern which are appropriate.

 

There are few opportunities to practise fortitude, magnanimity, or magnificence.  But whatever we do should be coloured with gentleness, temperance, modesty and humility.  There are gifts from God which are more excellent, but the practice of these is more important.  We must use them almost continually.

 

Among the divine gifts we should prefer those which are most conformable to our duty and not most to our liking.  For example, King St. Louis visited hospitals and served the sick with his own hands.  St. Francis loved poverty, which he called his lady.  St. Gregory the Great took pleasure in entertaining pilgrims.  St. Elizabeth, though a great princes, delighted in nothing as much as working among the poor in a spirit of self-forgetfulness.  The Saints excelled in various virtues in imitation of our Lord.

 

Job, by practising great patience during so many temptations, became perfectly holy.  As St. Gregory of Nazianzen says, by a single act of some divine gift well and perfectly used, we may attain to the height of virtue.  We, too, when assailed by pride or anger ought to incline and bend ourselves toward humility and gentleness, as did Job.  Also our exercises of prayer and of the Sacraments ought to tend to this end.

 

Let us practise patience, meekness, mortification of the heart, humility, obedience, poverty, chastity, consideration for others, bearing with their imperfections, diligence, and holy fervour.  However, we should not aspire to ecstasies or raptures which are not virtues, but rather rewards which God gives for virtue.  These graces are not at all necessary for true service and love of God.  If we stay humbly in our way, which is lower but safer and more suited to our littleness, God will raise us to grandeurs which are great indeed.

 

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