Salesian Literature

Chapter 8  :  Charity includes all the virtues

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The garden was watered by a river; it came out from Eden, and went on to divide into four branches (Gen. 2:10).  Each man is a garden, where God causes the river that is the natural light of reason to rise and water the Eden of the human heart.

 

This river breaks up into four branches; in other words, it flows in four streams over the four parts of the soul.  Over the practical intellect (which tells us what to do or what to avoid) the natural light of reason pours prudence; this helps us to judge wisely between good and evil.  Over the will it sheds justice, which is simply an enduring determined willingness to give each his due.  Over the mild passions of the sensitive appetite it lets temperance stream, to moderate them; over the emergency passions of that appetite it cause fortitude to flow, to check and govern every angry impulse.  And these four separate streams become further divided into others, so that all human actions may be performed in such a way as to make for natural integrity and bliss.

 

God means to enrich Christians, however, with a special gift; so, in addition to these natural streams, he makes a supernatural fountain well up in the apex of the soul’s higher part.  This we call grace.  It includes faith and hope, of course; yet its essence is charity.  This cleanses the soul from all its sins, adorns it with a wondrous beauty.

 

Eventually the waters of grace spread over all the soul’s powers and activities, to bestow on the intellect a heavenly prudence, on the will a holy justice, on the mild sensitive appetite a sacred temperance, and on the emergency appetite a devoted fortitude.  This enables a man to tend wholeheartedly towards the supernatural integrity and bliss that is essentially union with God.

 

If these four streams or rivers of charity in a soul meet with any one of the four natural virtues, they compel its obedience; they mingle with it, as scented water will with plain, to improve it.  But if charity meets with no natural virtues, when it is thus poured out in a soul, then it takes on itself their activities as occasion demands.  So, when charity found several virtues in St. Paul, St. Ambrose, St. Denis, St. Pachomius, it set them sparkling in its service.  But when God’s love found no virtue in Mary Magdalene, St. Mary of Egypt, the good thief, and a hundred similar penitents who were once great sinners, it took over the role and activity of all the virtues, so as to become their patience, their meekness, their humility, their generosity.

 

St. Paul, to be sure, does not merely say that charity gives us patience, kindness, steadfastness, simplicity; he says that it actually is patient, is kind, is steadfast (cf. 1 Cor. 13:4).

 

It is characteristic of the highest virtues known to angels and to men, not only to set the smaller virtues to work, but even to perform the same functions themselves.  A bishop has the distribution of all the ecclesiastical functions: opening the church, reading, exorcising, lighting the lamps, preaching, baptizing, sacrificing, administering communion, absolving; yet he himself can do – and does – all that, since his fullness of power includes all lesser functions.  That is why St. Thomas[1] recalls St. Paul’s words to insist that charity fulfils the activities of all the virtues; that is why St. Ambrose, writing to Demetrius, calls patience and the other virtues “charity’s members”; and why the great St. Augustine says the love of God comprises all the virtues, is responsible for all their activities in us.  These are his words:

 

When it is said that virtue is fourfold[2], I believe it refers to the various emotions which result from love.  I should have no hesitation, therefore, in defining those four virtues as follows: temperance is love giving itself utterly to God; fortitude is love gladly enduring everything for God; justice is love devoted to God alone, and so reasonably controlling whatever is due to man; prudence is love choosing what will contribute to union with God, setting aside what will prove detrimental.

 

Charity, to sum up, is that gold, proved in the fire, which our Lord counselled the Bishop of Laodicea to come and buy (Rev. 3:18); it is the value of all things, which it can and does provide.

 

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[1]  Summa Theologica 2.2,1.23.a.4,ad.2.

[2]  St. Augustine is thinking of the division into the four cardinal virtues, says St. Francis.

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