Salesian Literature

Chapter 5  :  Charity shares its perfection with the other virtues, gives them their individual value

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The fruits of grafted trees are always those of the graft.  If the graft is apple, the tree will bear apples; if cherry, it will bear cherries.  The different fruits, however, always retain the taste of the stock upon which they have been grafted.  Our actions, in the same way, take their names, their characteristics, from the particular virtues to which they owe their origin; but the flavour of their holiness they take from charity.  Charity is the root, the source of all a man’s holiness.

 

And just as the stock gives its own flavour to any fruits grafted on to it, but without destroying their other natural characteristics; so charity perfects the actions of other virtues, and gives them value, in such a way as not to deprive them of their own individual value, of the perfection natural to each one.

 

Charity – far from being a destructive, impoverishing virtue – improves, enlivens, enriches all the good it finds in the souls over which it reigns.  It is characteristic of charity, indeed, to increase the perfection of whatever perfections it meets with.  There is no question, therefore, of charity depriving the other virtues of their natural precedence and dignity; on the contrary, the greater perfection it finds, the greater perfection it gives.  It is like sugar, which preserves a variety of fruits by sweetening them all, yet still leaves them their own individual sweetness of taste, greater or less as it may be.

 

For all that, the fact remains that charity, when it is intense, powerful, supreme, will make richer, more perfect, any virtuous action a man may do.  According to St. Paul (1 Cor. 13:3), a man can be burnt at the stake and yet lack charity; all the more reason, then, for him to suffer such a death with some degree of charity.  A tiny virtue, I mean, may well turn out to be worth more in a soul possessing charity than martyrdom itself in a soul whole love is half-hearted, weak, sluggish.

 

So it is that the tiniest virtues of our Lady, or St. John, or other great saints, were of greater value in God’s sight than the greater virtues of lesser saints; just as the smallest impulses of love among the Seraphim are more ardent than are the greatest known to the lesser angels.  The first tentative notes of the nightingale are far more melodious than the song of the most practised goldfinch.

 

The little acts of simplicity, self-abasement, humiliations, in which the great saints took such pleasure – to hide themselves and shelter their hearts from the danger of vainglory – were done with all the perfection, all the intensity of charity.  For that reason, God found them more pleasing than the outstanding or famous labours of others who greatly lacked charity or devotion.

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