Salesian Literature

Chapter 2  :  Charity makes virtues so much more pleasing to God than they are in themselves

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If virtues, good as they are in themselves, win no eternal reward when they are practised by pagans or sinners, that is not surprising.  A sinner’s heart, after all, is unfit for an eternal reward; it is tuned away from God.  No one can claim the inheritance of heaven, which belongs to the Son of God, who is not related to him as his adopted brother – to say nothing of the condition by which God limited his promise of paradise to those in a state of grace.

 

Sinner’s virtues have no value beyond their natural worth, so they cannot earn supernatural rewards.  In fact, those rewards are called supernatural for the very reason that nature, and all that depends on it, can neither give nor merit them.

 

However, the virtues which God’s friends possess, moral and natural though they may be in themselves, are ennobled, raised to the dignity of saintly actions, because of the perfection of heart from which they spring.  That is one of the characteristics of friendship – it makes a friend, with everything good and decent about him, attractive.  Friendship lends its grace to all the activities of the loved one, however, little ground for favour there may be; qualities we find charming in a friend prove irritating in an enemy.

 

When a man is God’s friend, all his virtuous actions are dedicated to God; after all, if he has given his heart, surely he has given all that flows from it.  The man who gives away the whole tree, surely gives leaves, flowers, fruit.

 

If you want to make the moral human virtues of Epictetus, Socrates or Demades[1] holy, simply find a truly Christian soul to practise them – in other words, someone who possesses charity.  That is why God looked with favour first on Abel, then on his offering (cf. Gen. 4:4); the whole worth of the offering, in God’s eyes, derived from the goodness and piety of the man who made it.

 

How kind God is!  He looks so favourably on those who love him that he values their tiniest actions, wonderfully ennobles them, makes them holy in name and nature.  It is in view of his beloved Son that he means to honour his adopted children, sanctifying all that is good about them: as regards their bodies – bones, hair, garments, graves, even their passing shadow (cf. Acts. 5:15); as regards their souls – faith, hope, love, religion, even the peace, courtesy and affability of their hearts.

 

“Add charity to a man,” says St. Augustine, “and everything about him is the better for it; deprive him of charity, and nothing matters any more.”  As St. Paul says, everything helps to secure the good of those who love God (Rom. 8:28).

 

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[1]  An Athenian orator and philosopher quoted by Cicero.

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