Salesian Literature

Chapter 11  :  Human actions divorced from the love of God are valueless

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If the moral virtues, or even the supernatural virtues, are practised without charity, they are no good for heaven.  Even almsgiving is useless, though it leads us to give away all that we have, to feed the poor; even martyrdom, even giving ourselves to up to be burnt at the stake.  No, Theotimus, if we lack charity, as St. Paul says, it all goes for nothing (1 Cor. 13:3).

 

The merits and fruits of virtues, whether moral or Christian, are peacefully present in a soul where charity reigns supreme.  As soon as charity dies, all the merits and fruits of the other virtues die too, there and then.

 

The lake usually called Asphalite by pagan authors, and the Dead Sea by Christian ones, bears such a curse that nothing can live in it.  Fish from the Jordan die when they reach it, unless they turn back to swim against the stream.  The trees upon its shore produce no living thing: pluck what seems to be their fruit, and you find it but skin and rind filled with ash that floats away upon the wind.  All these are tokens of the vile sins for which this land, once peopled by four luxuriant cities, was punished – transformed, in the distant past, into a sink of stench and corruption.  There can be no better portrayal of the misery of sin, it seems to me, than this loathsome lake which had its origin in the most detestable dissoluteness to which human flesh can fall prey.

 

Mortal sin, then, like the Dead Sea, kills everything with which it comes in contact.  Still-born, the virtues of a sinful soul; lifeless, all that grows around it.  No life anywhere: for not only is sin a dead deed, but so pestilent, so poisonous, that even the finest virtues of a sinful soul are rendered lifeless.

 

Although the actions of a sinful man seems sometimes to compare favourably with those of an upright one, they are but shells filled with wind and dust.  God sees and rewards them, of course – but with temporal gifts, as we should a servant’s child.  For all that, they are empty shells; they can never satisfy God’s justice, never win an eternal reward.  They perish on the tree, they will not keep in the hand of God; they lack any real substance.

 

We can echo, then, all of us, the truthful exclamation of St. Paul: If I lack charity, I count for nothing (1 Cor. 13:2,3).  Also St. Augustine’s phrase: “Let charity into the heart, and everything is the better for it; deprive the heart of charity, and nothing matters any more.”  Nothing counts for eternal life, I mean; for, as I have already said (Book 11, chapter 1), the virtuous actions of sinners are not wasted where this life is concerned.

 

Nevertheless, Theotimus, my friend, how is a man the better for it, if he gains the whole world in time at the cost of losing his own soul (Mt. 16:26) in eternity?

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