347. Twentieth Friday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 317 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Charity sums up all the commandments.

From his position in the multitude a man asks our Lord a question. He was one of those learned men who were no longer able to understand the teaching that had been revealed to Moses, so entangled had it become because of their own sterile casuistry. Jesus opens his divine lips to reply to this doctor of the law and answers him slowly, with the calm assurance of one who knows what he is talking about: “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and your whole soul, and your whole mind. This is the greatest of the commandments and the first. And the second, it’s like, is this: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments all the law and the prophets depend.”

In the Law, God had established the commandment of charity, which sums up all the Commandments, because love is the fulfilling of the law. But when Christ came into the world he found that men’s hearts had grown cold and unloving, and that their minds had become caught up in endless insignificant details, causing them to lose sight of the great commandment of love. Not to hate one’s enemies, not to return evil for evil, to refrain from vengeance and to forgive ungrudgingly were all considered at that time unusual behaviour, too heroic for normal men. The same thing, let’s be honest about it, is true today. Such is the small-mindedness of men. But Christ, who came to save all mankind and who wishes Christians to be associated with him in the work of redemption, wanted to teach his disciples - you and me - to have a great and sincere charity, one which is more noble and more precious: that of loving one another in the same way as Christ loves each one of us. Only then, by imitating the divine pattern he has left us, and notwithstanding our own rough ways, will we be able to open our hearts to all men and love in a higher and totally new way.

That love is possible because charity comes to us along with the grace of God: he loved us first. We would do well to fill, to saturate ourselves with this most beautiful truth: “If we are able to love God, it is because we have been loved by God.” You and I are able to lavish affection on those around us, because we have been born to the Faith, through the Father’s love for us. In addition, Christ, by dying for us, has sent us the Holy Spirit, the very Love of God, so that we might obtain the fullness of charity. St John Chrysostom exclaims: Consider how great a gift has been given to you, and how marvellous a temple the Holy Spirit has made in your soul. Now we can fully observe the commandment of love. When God our Lord made us sharers in his divinity through grace, he gave us the precept of love without measure, but he also endowed us with his very own Love, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

As we consider these supernatural truths, we recall once again that the real measure of our achievements, and of our whole life, is love. But we cannot obtain this love by our own unaided effort. We have to approach the source of grace and ask for it humbly. Give me Lord, this love with which you want me to love you.

The practice of love of God.

With the Holy Spirit in our soul in grace, we can love God for his own sake, and in the way he wants to be loved, with his own love. St Thomas Aquinas says that the object of charity is one: the goodness of God. It has no other aim. Charity is a certain friendship of man with God. It is a love of friendship, an unselfish love, which does not seek its own personal satisfaction, but rather that of the friend. But the Friend is now God himself.

With my whole heart I seek thee. In this poor human heart of ours there cannot be any room for loves that do not lead us to God: his love has to fill it completely. We want to do all things for him, purifying, forging our actions in the fire of charity, so as to have no other love than his love. It is true that we don’t have a great deal to offer him. But let us not forget that everything that is done for Love acquires beauty and becomes great.

To make the Love of God our abiding passion is a whole programme for holiness. Divine Love, just like human love, is increased by grace through the practice of virtue. To learn to love, we need to love a great deal and make many acts of love in the course of the day.

Our Lord expects us to look for him, to love him, to call on him, especially when we find the going tough. He wants us to turn to him, trustingly and without fear. Our God is a Father who looks upon us contentedly and who never abandons us. It is we, his poor creatures, who leave him, or who forget to live with him. And, now that there are so many who leave him or who are intent on ignoring him, we have to try to be even closer to him. How? I have told you already: by seeking him, by loving him more every day, by asking his help and making up to him when we realize we haven’t treated him well.

In spiritual matters, I would like us to be very rich in doctrine and in the knowledge and love of God. Invoke the Holy Spirit, who dwells within us, and tell him of your desire to give yourselves completely and to be very docile to his grace.

We will love God at every moment if we do everything just for him and never mechanically or for personal advantage. We will love him all day if we try to ensure that all our actions are accompanied by an offering that is real, living and ardent: “for love of you, Lord! Because I love you!”

Loving our neighbour.

God has given us his love, for us to love him, and also for us to love others as he loves them. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. Charity moves us to love others, loving them as God loves them, with a love that is firm and unwavering. In the words of St John Chrysostom, most people associate with others for purely worldly reasons … and so their love cannot be constant. One lapse of attention, one setback to their personal interests, envy, conceit, or any such occurrence, is enough to ruin a friendship. This is because that friendship had no spiritual foundation … whereas the love which has Christ as its basis is firm, unbreakable and indestructible.

Our labour of spreading love finds the ground already prepared, since all human beings possess an underlying aspiration to union, a reflection of their common condition as creatures. This is how our Father explained it: since we are all children of God, our fraternity is not a cliche or an empty dream; it beckons as a goal which, though difficult, is really ours to achieve.

As Christians we must show that affection of this kind is in fact possible, whatever the cynics or sceptics, those disappointed in love or those with a cowardly outlook on life, might say. It may be quite difficult to be truly affectionate, for man was created free and he can rebel against God in a useless and bitter way. But it is possible and people can attain it, because it flows as a necessary consequence of God’s love for us and our love for God. If you and I want it, Jesus also wants it. Then we will obtain a full and fruitful understanding of the meaning of suffering, sacrifice and unselfish dedication in ordinary life.

As our Founder taught us, this charily ought to be universal and ordered. If we must also love our enemies (here I mean those who regard us as such, for I do not consider myself an enemy of anyone or of anything) we have all the more reason for loving those who are simply distant from us, those whom we find less attractive, those who seem the opposite of you or me on account of their language, culture or upbringing. Order in charity leads us to practise it first and foremost towards the people closest to us our colleagues at work, and in a special way our brothers and sisters in the Work and our own relations. The love of Christ which unites us has to lead us to bring about their happiness, especially their eternal happiness. And, since we meet many of these people every day, this continual association provides us with an ongoing opportunity to practise a particularly refined and exquisite charity.

The only true love is God’s Love! We have only one heart, which has to be full of only one love, with which we love everyone: God and others. With the same love with which I could have loved another human being, our Father tells us, with that same heart I love Jesus Christ, and the Father and the Holy Spirit and our Blessed Lady.