The charity
For Saint Bonaventure, charity is the virtue that makes us love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves.
- Charity is the ultimate goal of all Christian life, because it unites us with God.
- Charity manifests itself in works of mercy.
- Charity is the way to know God.
- Charity is the greatest gift that God gives us to make us share in his happiness.
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The fruit of Charity
The fruit of charity, or soul, is truly great, but hidden.
- According to Saint Augustine: Charity itself can tolerate adversity, moderate prosperity, is powerful in strong passions, cheerful in good works, very sure in temptation, very generous in hospitality, very happy among authentic brothers, very patient among false ones, calm among the outrages, beneficent among the assaults of hatred, placid in the streets, innocent among the snares, suffers in iniquity, breathes serenely in the truth. Oh, happy love! From it flows the probity of customs, the purity of affections, the refinement of the intellect, the sanctity of desires, the clarity of works, the fruitfulness of virtues, the dignity of merits, the sublimity of prizes and honours. O sweetness of love and love of sweetness! Let my heart feed on you; let the bowels of my soul be satisfied with your nectar!
- According to Saint Jerome: One cannot reach bliss without the virtue of charity, even if one can have an upright faith: charity is so precious that it convinces us that without it even prophecy and martyrdom are nothing. No prize can compensate for charity. In fact, charity holds the primacy of all the virtues. Oh, how miserable is the soul of one who, with his love, embraces temporal things, which are acquired with difficulty, possessed in fear and lost with pain!.
But blessed is he who loves you, Lord, and the enemy for you and the friend in you! The only one who never loses a loved one is the one who holds everyone dear in you. No one loses you except he who leaves, and since he leaves you, where does he flee except from your benevolence towards your wrath? He loves you less who loves other things with you without loving them because of you. O love that always burns and never goes out! O charity, my God, inflame me and keep me from the concupiscence of the flesh, from the concupiscence of the eyes, from the pride of life!
- Saint Gregory in his moral treatises: How happy and blessed is he who has his love fixed only in eternity! Prosperity does not exalt him, nor does misfortune demolish him. Having nothing in the world to darken his affection for him, there is nothing in the world he can fear. Saint Paul: Charity is patient, it is benign, not envious, it does not swell with pride, it does not boast, it is not ambitious, it does not seek its own interest, it does not get angry, it does not take into account the evil received, it does not enjoy injustice, but he delights in the truth
(1 Cor 13,4-6).
Saint Gregory comments thus: Charity is patient; as it bears the evils inflicted with a serene heart; it is benign, because it responds generously to evil by providing good, it does not boast, because not desiring anything in this way, it is incapable of envying earthly successes:
- He does not become inflated, because anxiously aspiring to eternal reward, he cannot exalt himself with external goods.
- She does not cloak herself in vanity, because by expanding her love for him only in God and in others, she ignores what is at odds with objective rectitude.
- She is not ambitious, because she ardently concerns herself with internal realities.
- She does not crave the external ones in any way.
- She does not seek her own interest, because she disregards as foreign all the things that she possesses in a transitory manner and considers nothing as her own except what remains in her permanently.
- she does not get angry, because even if struck by insults, she has no feeling of revenge, while she expects a greater reward for the great tribulations suffered.
- he does not take into account the harm received, because she strengthens the spirit with sincere and pure love and radically eradicates all hatred.
- Nothing polluting can remain in her soul.
- She does not enjoy injustice, because burning with the one true love towards all, it is also impossible for her to rejoice in the ruin of her enemies; she is pleased with the truth, because by loving others, she rejoices in what is right in them as an increase in her own profit.
