On the True Meaning of Charity

"So faith, hope, charity abide, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

To what exactly does St. Paul refer in his famous discourse of 1 Corinthians 13 when he speaks of charity? In many translations the word love is substituted for charity, but one can get a mistaken notion of what the passage means without a proper understanding of the context. Paragraph 2093 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the Christian obligation to charity in the following manner:

"Faith in God's love encompasses the call and the obligation to respond with sincere love to divine charity. The first commandment enjoins us to love God above everything and all creatures for him and because of him."

Note that the definition goes well beyond the mere act of being nice to others or engaging in corporal works of mercy. Behaving in a charitable manner presupposes that one's actions are motivated by and directed toward a love of God above all things and for His own sake. There are many implications to this definition of charity that are often lost on the modern-day secular world, which in its reductionism has sadly reduced the meaning of charity to the mere act described above.

The first and most obvious, not to mention the most dire, consequence of attempting to separate the meaning of charity from its proper context of loving God above all else is that the failure to love God leads to the failure to love those who are created in the image and likeness of God: namely, man. As mentioned in a previous post, it is no coincidence that the supporters of the culture of death are, without exception, comprised entirely of individuals who do not believe in God (despite frequent pretensions to the contrary on the part of many of them) or, as is more likely the case with those who engage in so-called "militant atheism," devout haters of the One who is Love. Jesus Himself directed us in the proper ordering of love when he gave us the greatest commandment - namely, to love the Lord our God with all of our heart and all of our soul - and the second greatest commandment, to love our neighbor as ourself. Without the former, it is not possible to properly perform the latter. Our modern society has largely decided to ignore the greatest commandment; the results, I think, speak for themselves.

A secondary consequence of the loss of the true meaning of charity is that acts of nicety and other good works lose their primary focus and moral efficacy. Without the desire to please God as their goal, such acts begin to be performed for ulterior motives, and more often than not become ordered towards the personal gain of those who perform the actions. When what appear to be good works are performed primarily for the benefit of the performer, these works are deprived of the selflessness without which charity cannot exist. A person who feels the need to announce his every good work or invite a cameraman along every time he wants to help others is not a charitable person, no matter how much the media chooses to fawn over him.

A loss of the true sense of charity also leads to the very modern notion of "tolerance" - namely, that we must not only be accepting of who others are, but also accepting of what they do. This, of course, means no worshiping One who overturned tables and lashed out at those who turned His Father's house into a den of thieves, for such a person is the very antithesis of what it means to be "tolerant." Modern "tolerance" is very much a product of the moral relativism that rejects truth and the One who came into the world to testify to the truth. G. K. Chesterton once wrote that tolerance was the virtue of the man who lacked convictions. And it is a fact that one who is convinced of nothing must necessarily be accepting of everything, whether the thing in question is good or evil. But the one who has not rejected Christ and understands the true meaning of charity will also understand what is truly called for when it comes to tolerance. In his essay, "The Limits of Dialogue," Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of the Diocese of Lincoln, NE describes it thus:

"Speaking now about toleration. It is my view that this word, and this attitude and procedure must also be treated as desirable in some instances, but can be perilous in others. The scholastic definition of toleration is "Toleratio est permissio negativa mali." Literally, it means that tolerance is a negative permission of evil, a patient forbearance in the face of evil, either real or imaginary. Tolerance and toleration do not really concern human beings. We are not allowed to tolerate human beings; we are required by our religion to love all human beings. Also, we are not allowed to tolerate the good. That which is good must be approved, accepted, and promoted as well as fostered. Tolerance always refers to some kind of evil, physical, moral, intellectual, whether real or imagined."

He goes on to say:

"If we truly love our neighbor we must be impatient with the evil, physical, moral, or intellectual, under which our neighbor suffers, and to the extent we are able or responsible, we are obliged to relieve the suffering that comes from this evil."

We must, of course, be vigilant about understanding the extent of that responsibility, and must pray as Blessed Mother Teresa prayed (and continues to pray on our behalf) for the strength to endure that which we cannot change, the courage to change what we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

With God, all things are possible. Without God - or the love for Him that orders all good things - the only thing we can count on are the seeds of chaos sown by the evil one who, as the chief enemy of the One who is Love, is the source of that vice which is the greatest assault upon the virtue of charity. God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald