In the course of its theological development, the Christian tradition again and again identifies the good of friendship among human persons as the single human experience best able to illumine specifically the meaning of divine love. The New Testament itself warrants the choice of friendship as a model for agapic love or theological charity. And so in their treatises, the Fathers and the medieval doctors sought to explain the important words that Jesus spoke to his disciples before his Passion: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father” (Jn 15: 15). In Christian life, says Aquinas, authentic and complete love implies “a sharing of man with God by his sharing happiness with us; and it is on this that a friendship is based.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 23, a. 1. Theological literature, especially from the Cistercian school, developed the New Testament teaching on agapeFor a study of the New Testament notion of charity, see Ceslaus Spicq, O.R, Agape dans le Nouveau Testament (Paris, 1958) [English translation: Charity and Liberty in the New Testament (New York, 1965), pp. 11-71]. Aquinas provides his commentary on this teaching in Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 23, aa. 1 - 8, where he first inquires about the nature of charity as a kind of friendship (a. 1), as a created reality (a. 2), and as a specific virtue (a. 3 - 5); then he turns to consider the relationship of charity to the other virtues, first by appraising its importance among the virtues (a. 6) and secondly by considering its role and influence (aa. 7, 8). Two major elements in this analysis require further consideration: First, the communicatio or koinonia of beatitude; and second, benevolentia, the reciprocity of benevolent love.

The New Testament makes it abundantly clear that Christian life is ordered towards communion (koinonia): “What we have seen and heard, we announce to you also, so that you might be in communion with us; and we, we are in communion with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn 1: 3).See also, Rom 12: 13; 1 Cor 1: 9; 2 Cor 13: 13; Phil 2: 1. Texts such as these, moreover, have occasioned sharp differences of interpretation between Protestant and Roman Catholic authors. The possibility of this kind of communion lies at the heart of Christian revelation. “Charity is not any kind of love of God,” Aquinas insists, “but that love of God by which he is loved as the object of beatitude [beatitudinis objectum] on which we are bent by faith and hope.”Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 65, a. 5, ad 1. This brief definition captures and underscores the unique character of the love of divine friendship as well as its relationship to the other virtues of the Christian life. Charity is first of all a sharing in the very love of God himself.

While sharing in charity moves beyond the self-interested love of hope, it does not exclude the love of desire. The British theologian Thomas Gilby summarizes this important point of Catholic understanding about Christian love.

Charity is more than the loving of the good-for-you, and more than loving the good for another; it is a loving shared by you and another of such sort that the terms “egoism” and “altruism” are irrelevant. It is the whole-hearted love of God but no more self-denying at the deepest level than the object in the union of knowledge and love spells diminishment for the subject.Thomas Gilby, O.P., introduction to vol. 34 of the Blackfriars translation of the Summa theologiae, pp. xvii, xviii.

Because it establishes the believer in communion with God himself, theological charity represents a distinctive form of the love of benevolence or of friendship. Accordingly, the formal terminative object of theological charity is the good God who is to be loved above all other persons and things, and the formal mediating object, i.e., that which motivates us to love or that by which we achieve theological love, is nothing other than the identical divine goodness. Moreover, this love of God for his own sake provides the content of the communication that believers share with one another.

What human experience or relationship best illustrates the sharing of charity? The canonical Scriptures speak about the reality of the Church, whose soul is love, in a variety of images. “These have been taken,” Lumen gentium explains, “from the life of a shepherd, from agriculture, from the construction of buildings, and even from the family and betrothal.”Lumen gentium, chap. 1, no. 6. By using metaphors such as these, Christian revelation announces a sharing that exists at the most basic levels of human existence. For this reason, the theologian must probe a range of proper analogies that can serve, under the light of divine revelation, to illumine the nature of authentic Christian love. The ultimate significance that charity holds in the Christian life dictates that its analogues should be taken from the realities of nature and ordinary life, not from abstractions.

In Familiaris consortio, Pope John Paul II remarks on the foundational character of the human family for all other instances of human society: “ ‘Since the Creator of all things has established the conjugal partnership as the beginning and basis of human society,’ the family is ‘the first and vital cell of society.’ “Familiaris consortio, 3, no. 42. And because of this immediacy with the order of creation, one theological tradition identifies the family as the best analogy for understanding the fellowship of divine charity. Why? In this kind of friendship one finds: “a fellowship rooted in nature; one of reverence in equality; a proportionate relationship of justice and love; a kind of excellence that arises from people loving each other and for these reasons it is judged to be the best expression of divine charity.”Cajetan, In secundam secundae q. 24, a. 1, no. 1. Just as the human family constitutes in the order of creation a kind of “community of friendship,” so the Church includes all those who are bound together in the friendship of divine love. Christian catechesis even speaks about the family as the “domestic church.”

The choice of the human family as a basic analogate for speaking about divine charity illumines the Christian conviction that grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it; or as the Second Vatican Council puts the same truth, that “sanctity is conducive to a more human way of living even in society here on earth.”Lumen gentium chap. 5, no. 40. While Familiaris consortio concerns more the fundamental mission of the family within the Church rather than the way in which the family naturally images (and prophesies) the communicatio of charity, the Holy Father points out the parallels that exist between human development in the family and growth in Christian maturity:

Christian marriage and the Christian family build up the Church: for in the family the human person is not only brought into being and progressively introduced by means of education into the human community, but by means of the rebirth of baptism and education in the faith the child is also introduced into God’s family, which is the Church.Familiaris consortio, 2, no. 15.

The New Testament records that Jesus himself favors comparing the superabundant love of his Father to the ordinary love that properly belongs within the covenant of the human family. “What father among you will give his son a snake if he asks for a fish, or hand him a scorpion if he asks for an egg? If you, with all your sins, know how to give your children good things, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Lk 11:11-13).

Not every form of communion with the transcendent realizes the communion of beatitude. For example, some hold that an undifferentiated communication of being that does not distinguish between the divine activity whereby God both creates and sustains the whole cosmic order and the personal union of grace with the blessed Trinity adequately accounts for what the New Testament calls love. For Aristotle, love of God coincides entirely with contemplation of the First Mover, but he also concludes that no truly personal relationship could develop between mortals and the divine. It is important to note that on account of the Scriptures’ clear teaching, Christians unequivocally dissent from this agnostic theism in whatever form it may appear. For as St Paul instructs the Romans, “All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. You did not receive a spirit of slavery leading you back into fear, but a spirit of adoption through which we cry out ‘Abba!’ - ’Father!… But if we are children, we are heirs as well: heirs of God, heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him… so as to be glorified with him” (Rom 8: 14-15,17). In other words, the Christian tradition recognizes that the incarnation definitively changes the terms that establish our relationship with God, so that the only actual perfection for humankind lies in beatific communion with the blessed Trinity.It is significant to observe that at this point in the Summa theologiae Aquinas does not digress about any purpose or end for the human person other than beatific union with God. Moreover, the Church repeatedly announces the universal call to holiness in these Trinitarian terms: “In the different kinds of life and its different duties, there is one holiness cultivated by all who are led by the Spirit of God; obeying the voice of the Father and worshipping God the Father in spirit and in truth, they follow Christ poor and humble in carrying his cross so that they may deserve to be sharers in his glory.”Lumen gentium, chap. 5, no. 41.

The Christian koinonia establishes the foundation for a rich relationship of mutual love, for benevolentia. Within the communion of beatitude, charity embodies a reciprocal benevolence; it is only with a friend, says Aquinas, that a friend is friendly - amicus est amico amicus. A theological commentator helps us realize the profound reality that theological charity encompasses:

According to divus Thomas, the final, specifying ratio for charity abides in the very divine goodness itself as it is objective beatitude: not, however, insofar as we seek that goodness for ourselves, for that belongs to the love of desire, nor, if we speak in a most precise manner, as we wish that goodness to God, for that is included in the love of simple benevolence; rather, as we wish the good to God as to a friend with whom we are united and who communicates himself to us in beatitude. Thus God is loved in charity not with simple benevolence but with a reciprocal benevolence of friendship in the supernatural order.Cajetan, In secundam secundae q. 23, a. 5.

Christ instructs us that God is a Trinity of persons: “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” (Jn 14: 10); and “the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, will instruct you in everything” (Jn 14: 26). Accordingly, charity never implies love for an abstract ultimate reality or for a nameless expression of transcendental mystery. Since its nature includes the notion of relation to another who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Christian charity achieves its perfection at the deepest level of personhood. Gospel truth accordingly excludes any real “friendship” with infra-personal creatures, for in loving a good wine, I am really loving myself drinking the wine. But in a true friendship, an amicitia honesta, one loves the friend precisely by wishing him or her the good and in that reciprocal benevolence lies the model for Trinitarian friendship.

Even Aristotle contended that some kind of amicitia honesta or virtuous friendship can exist among humankind. He held that in the love of benevolence, we esteem the “honest worth” of the friend, instead of the friend’s usefulness or pleasurableness.See Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 8, chap. 3(1156a7 -1156b32). Neither Aristotle nor any philosopher ever dreamt, however, that human friendship could extend to God. Christ of course reveals precisely this, namely, that God himself is numbered among the friends that we can have. Moreover, he instructs us that God wants to be each person’s First Friend, to bestow the beatitude that only a share in divine love communicates. Because of this free, divine initiative, divine charity enables a person to love God as God loves himself, viz, both on account of God’s own self (or his “honest worth”) and because of God’s goodness. Moreover, since it is founded on the unlimited goodness of God, the communion of saints welcomes each new member as an occasion for increasing its joy and happiness, whereas useful or pleasurable friendships are limited by definition. Fra Angelico visually captures this expression of Christian communio in his painting, “Welcome into Paradise,” where the multitude of saints from “all different kinds of life” greet each other with charity unfeigned. Since it relies on the supposition that true friendship rests on something finite, as if love might run out if too many people share in it, unholy jealousy signals something short of true friendship, a lack of the love of true benevolence.

When the theologian says that charity loves God as God loves himself, this means that charity is based on the absoluteness of divine goodness. God is perfectly good, meaning first that no created being can cause God to act in any way whatsoever, and second, that since the perfection of the divine nature excludes all potentiality, God needs nothing other than his own goodness in order to enjoy the most perfect measure of perfection. In a beautifully lapidary way, Aquinas expresses this truth about the absolute sovereignty of God’s goodness.

The ultimate end is not the communication of goodness, but rather divine goodness itself. It is from his love of this goodness that God wills it to be communicated. In fact, when he acts because of his goodness, it is not as if he were pursuing something that he does not possess, but as it were willing to communicate what he possesses. For he does not act from desire for the end, but from love of the end.Quaestiones disputatae de potentia, q. 3, a. 15, ad 14.

God stands at the origin of all true friendship; he is the one Unbefriended Friend who in Christ befriends all those destined to share in Christ’s glory. “For those whom he foreknew,” St Paul instructs the Romans, “he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family” (Rom 8: 29). The great gift of holiness that Christ communicates to the members of his Body is motivated only by the goodness that belongs to God alone.

How, then, are creatures related to the goodness of God? In order to answer this question, we should distinguish between loving God in himself and loving God in his creatures. First, we can love God in himself, in ipso, simply by letting God be God, by delighting in the fact that he is God. Second, we can love God in his creatures, by wanting them to be rightly ordered to him and to work for his glory. One commentator expresses the reason for this distinction in the following terms:

There are some goods, however, which more properly are said to belong to God than to be God’s, for example, honor, kingship, obedience, and in short, everything which should be ordered to his glory. In charity we not only wish for God that these things be (as with the goods which are in ipso) but we are eager that they be and flourish. We do what we are able to do to ensure that these goods grow; we are happy when they thrive and sad when they fail; we fear lest they falter and are courageous against those things which impede them.Cajetan, In secundam secundae, q. 23, a. 1, n II.

This explanation of charity effectively provides a commentary on the Our Father, for when we ask that God’s name be hallowed and that his Kingdom come we actually pray for growth in charity. Christ gives to his disciples a new personal consciousness with respect to their filial relationship with God, and as God’s children we are impelled to a new sort of love. “The moral task of the Christian,” explains von Balthasar, “is to accomplish this personal consciousness in a vigorous way. In this way the Church is open to the world, just as Christ is open to the Father and his all-embracing Kingdom (1 Cor 15: 24).”Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Nine Theses” (2) p. 110.

In his Summa contra gentiles, Aquinas offers some helpful indications of what constitutes this “personal consciousness of one another among the members” of the Church.Bk IV, chaps. 21-22. He emphasizes the following six personal qualities of friendship: First, exchange of personal knowledge, openness: “Now, it is proper to friendship that a man reveals his secrets to his friend: because friendship unites their affections, and of two hearts makes one; and consequently when a man reveals something to his friend, he would seem not to have taken it out of his own heart.” Secondly, effective sharing of goods: “Now it is part of friendship not only that a man share his secrets with his friends, on account of the union of hearts, but the same union requires that he should share his belongings with him; because, since a man regards his friend as his other self, it follows that he will succor him as he would succor himself, by sharing his goods with him.” Third, pardon of every offense: “Now, if a man becomes another’s friend, by this very fact all offense is removed: since friendship is opposed to offense.” Fourth, contemplation: “In the first place mutual intercourse would seem to belong to friendship in a very special manner… Since, then, the Holy Spirit makes us to be lovers of God, it follows that by him we are made contemplators of God.” Fifth, interior joy: “It also belongs to friendship that a man delight in the presence of his friend, and rejoice in his words and deeds: also that he find in him consolation in all his troubles: hence it is especially to our friends that we have recourse in time of sorrow.” Sixth, harmony of wills: “It also belongs to friendship that a man consent to the things which his friend wills.” Taken together, these six characteristics constitute the outlines of charity by which we are joined to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and to those who, with us, share in the communio - the friends of God.

Hans Urs von Balthasar insists on the Trinitarian significance of Christian communio and the divine origins of all authentic love in the world; “love for one another,” he writes, “which is the object of the new command that Jesus gave us to fulfill, is poured out into the hearts of the faithful (Rom 5: 5) antecedently in a more profound way through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit of the Father and of the Son as the divine ‘We.’ “ And again we return to the central significance of the incarnation, for it is through Christ that we are drawn into this endless and perichoretic interplay of Trinitarian love: “For Christ, the Son of God, who with the Father and the Spirit ‘alone is holy,’ loved the Church as his bride and delivered himself up for it that he might sanctify it (see Eph 5: 25-26), and he joined it to himself as his Body and bestowed on it the gift of the Holy Spirit to the glory of God.”Lumen gentium, chap. 5, no. 39. And within the Church, authentic eucharistic union with Christ realizes in each one of the members of his Body the qualities of life that represent the perfection of charity.

For Christian moral theology, the relationship of the theological virtues to the intellectual and moral virtues raises a significant question. For just as the Church develops out of the human family, the habitus of grace strengthens and enriches the habitus that actualize human nature. Because it takes seriously the affirmation that, even here on earth, the fullness of the Christian life conduces to a more human way of living, the Thomist tradition provides the grounds for extensive reflection on the relationship between the acquired and the infused moral virtues. Aquinas and his commentatorial tradition principally investigate two central questions about Christian virtue and human excellence. The first concerns the universality of charity: Is charity so much at the heart of the other virtues that without divine grace human virtue cannot even exist? And the second probes the mode of charity’s influence: How does charity exercise its influence on the moral virtues, and even on the other theological virtues? In the technical language of theology, the second question inquires whether charity is the “form” of the other virtues?

In order to achieve excellence in the moral life, does a person require the infused virtue of charity? Why would charity add to the perfection of the moral virtues? In order to answer these questions, we need to adopt a position on the relationship between grace and nature. Historically, theological discussion about nature and grace vacillates between the Scylla of outright humanism and the Charybdis of positive reprobation. The first extreme, Pelagian humanism, identifies Christian life with the best that nature can achieve, and the second, ultra-Augustinianism, argues that the person living outside of grace and charity immediately falls into sinful disorder on every front. Against the first school of thought, the Church defines that nothing effectively meritorious for our eternal salvation either begins or comes to completion without the special help from God that we call divine grace. Against the second view, the Church repudiates the theses associated with the milieu of Michel Baius, namely, that every act of an unbeliever amounts to something sinful, and that human nature possesses no capacity whatsoever for realizing its inbuilt capacities and ends. Indeed the Church even recognizes that a person without charity can profess the Creed without hypocrisy.See Aquinas’s illuminating remark on unformed or dead faith in Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 1, a. 9, ad 3: “The profession of faith contained in the Creed, which is for all believers, is delivered, in the person of the Church, and this is a loving and living faith, such as is found in all persons who worthily belong to the Church;… those of the faithful who lack this loving belief should try to attain it.”

Within the dependable traditions of scholastic theology, two tendencies emerge with respect to evaluating the good that an individual human person can accomplish without the help of divine grace. First, there is the optimistic position represented in the work of the Jesuit commentator Francisco Suarez. This position holds that the wounds of original sin amount to only a mere privation of original justice, so that after the fall, Adam exists in what Suarezians refer to as a state of “integral nature.” In many instances, the criticisms spawned by the mid-20th century European theological movement known as la nouvelle theologie aim at this view of the “natural man,” which formed the basis for standard instruction in many schools during the neo-scholastic era. Secondly, there is the fundamentally misanthropic position, represented by certain Augustinians, that the wounds of original sin effectively constitute a corruption of the good of nature, viz, a positive disordering of our capacities, so that any human good outside of grace would be accomplished, if at all, only with the greatest difficulty. Adherents of this school eschew natural virtue as the practical equivalent of “apparent virtue,” and hold a dim view of anything that transpires outside of a clearly perceptible association with the sources of divine grace.

Neither of these exaggerated viewpoints adequately represent a proper theological perspective on the necessity of grace for authentic human conduct. First of all, the concept of a “pure [human] nature” is a chimera. It is flatly erroneous to suppose that, once Adam by sinning lost the endowments of grace for all humankind, there remained a purely natural “man,” by which is understood human beings ready to pursue happily the ends for which their natural capacities endowed them. The Bible, to be sure, offers no grounds for such imagining. In addition, a correct philosophical conception of nature argues against the view. For by definition any nature implies activity; natura comes from nativitas, and implies being born to act in a certain way. Thus in the human being a “pure nature,” viz, one that would entirely act on its own, could not long remain in either a pure or integral state. For once individual human persons began to engage the moral challenges that arise in a real world, they would encounter obstacles for which, relying only on natural resources, they possessed no effective moral resources. The privation of original justice means, in fact, that human nature is left bereft of what it requires to keep from becoming unglued in the world of actual moral decision and choice. And the more complex the moral situation, the more difficult it becomes for unaided nature to maintain its virtuousness. But this does not mean that without grace the human person can do nothing well; projects indispensable for human life such as - and these are Aquinas’s own examples - planting vineyards and building shelters are surely possible. Aquinas, it should be noticed, singles out the elementary activities of homo faber to illustrate some of the things that a person can accomplish without the help of divine grace. We are not, however, invited to suppose that there exists a natural clone of the one vocation in which we are “all called to the fulfillment of the Christian life and the perfection of charity,” so that outside of Christian culture a human person can actually achieve full moral excellence and happiness.Lumen gentium, chap. 5, no. 40.

In fact when Aquinas asks whether without charity there can exist any true virtue, his response is quite nuanced. Recall that virtue represents a dispositio perfecti ad optimum, that is, an ordering of what is perfect to its maximum realization. In this, virtue differs from a mere disposition, for as true operative habitus, the virtues ready a man or woman for sustained morally virtuous conduct. The moral virtues differ in fact from the intellectual virtues in as much as the latter possess no ability to shape an overall good moral character, though they do make a person smart and, perhaps, even wise. Moral virtue shapes human character. Thus the standard definition insists that moral virtue makes both the doer and his or her actions good - “bonum facit habentem et opus eius bonum reddit.” How much of this moral goodness can one achieve without charity?

The Christian tradition generally agrees that without divine charity a person cannot develop a complete life of authentic virtue. But Aquinas introduces an important distinction for the moral theologian. “Charity,” he says, “comes into the definition of all the virtues, not because it is essentially identical with them, but because somehow they all depend on charity.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 23, a. 4, ad 1. How do the moral virtues depend on charity, and still retain their individual character as true human virtues? As a model for theological explanation, Aquinas suggests the way that the intellectual virtue of prudence regulates and integrates the behavioral virtues in human life.“There is a parallel here,” Aquinas says, “with prudence which, as Aristotle points out, forms part of the definition of the moral virtues because they depend on it” (Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 23, a. 4, ad 1). In Aquinas’s account of the moral life, any vicious habitus can threaten the equilibrium of prudence. P. T. Geach, The Virtues (Cambridge, 1977), p. xxxi, summarizes the classic argument for the dependence of the moral virtues on prudence as follows: “Corrupt habitus of action in any area destroy the habitus of prudence; but without prudence as a regulator no behavioral habitus is genuinely virtuous; so the loss or lack of any one behavioral virtue is fatal both to prudence and to all other behavioral virtues.” In any event, the human virtues still retain their identity and moral value in the person who enjoys the favor of divine love, such that theologians must distinguish between human virtue in itself and human virtue as it depends on theological charity.In an attempt to address the question, the 16th-century Italian theologian Cajetan distinguishes between the “essence of virtue,” by which he means that a person possesses the form of the habitus, and the “state of virtue,” that is, when a person actually puts the form into action. On the basis of this distinction, he suggests that without charity it would be possible for someone to possess an unconnected string of virtuous “essences,” but not actually to live out the “state of virtue.” Thus according to Cajetan, a person without charity could enjoy the radical “essence” of a virtue, but not incorporate this form into a complete life of virtuous conduct. What is more important, even this residual “essence of virtue” would in the course of time and under the pressures of everyday life break down into dishevelled bits of human behavior. Because the “essence of virtue” succumbs so easily to the existential temptations of life in the world, another commentator, John of St Thomas, gives no quarter to the humanist position that human nature can take care of itself, and instead holds a dimmer view of what human nature can achieve without charity. For John of St Thomas, even to achieve the essence of virtue requires that a person possess the ensemble of the virtues, and thus charity.

Because the one who believes in Christ enjoys the aid of divine grace in the actual living out of human life, we can make some helpful distinctions about charity as the form of the moral virtues. For example, without charity a person can act in accord with the simple natural dispositions of nature. (For example, Roger Milquetoast finds practicing chastity easy because he finds greeting anyone difficult.) But in the present economy of salvation, only charity can uphold the whole ensemble of authentic virtues, so that the human person achieves the freedom that the New Testament promises to those who remain united with Christ. Because Aristotle knew only about the power of human intelligence, he opined that prudence was required to maintain an ordered and integral life. The Gospel supplies another kind of wisdom, and this makes itself felt in the power of the Holy Spirit that is poured into the souls of the just. Von Balthasar insists that only the beneficiary of Christian revelation is invited to share in a type of freedom that comes from the supremely free God.“Nine Theses” (8), p. 119. Human prudence alone may keep the wise person from committing major anomalies in a disordered life, but only theological charity sustains a uniformly happy life and leaves the believer free to attain the highest Good.

Of course, one does not include among authentic virtues those counterfeit virtues that characterize the vicious, for example, the tenacity of the miser, the meekness of the drunkard, or the boldness of the rapist. But one can inquire concerning such apparent moral oxymorons as the industriousness of the promiscuous businessman or the generosity that a criminal shows towards his family. Ought the Christian to regard such traits as authentic virtues? In other words, because of his after-working-hours vice, is it also vicious for the businessman to apply himself dutifully to his professional work? Or does the person who lives at odds with the civil authorities do wrong when he legitimately provides for his family with abundance? Since these would-be “virtues” do not render either the businessman or the mafioso altogether good, it would seem not. Yet there is a sense in which persons such as these exhibit authentically virtuous actions, even though their lives taken as a whole obviously exclude naming these authentically good dispositions true and outright virtues. For just as without prudence the human virtues lose their proper direction and integrity, so when vice forms a significant part of a person’s life, he or she remains fragile in the pursuit of perfection. Common experience shows this to be true. The lustful businessman can easily find himself turning away from honest business practices in order to finance his sexual liaisons, or the gang member may substitute lavish spending on his family for the more personal expressions of filial love that are proper to parenting.

There is still more that needs to be said concerning the role of charity in the moral life. Because the industriousness of the profligate businessman and the generosity of the racketeering citizen do not exist in a “state of virtue,” that is, do not belong to the order of virtue that only charity can establish, these isolated virtues do not make the one who possesses them fully good and entirely happy. Even if one allows that some individual persons might develop all the natural moral virtues, these human beings would still fall short of achieving the destiny for which we are made. To put it differently, such “naturally” good persons would still miss the supreme goodness of God for which each human person enjoys the passive capacity; indeed, only the love that God bestows in theological charity can unite human beings with their ultimate true goal. Aquinas contends further that this rule holds true even if one grants the hypothesis that a person, e.g., the politician qua politician or a whole society could make building the City of Man an ultimate goal and even achieve a well-ordered human community. Von Balthasar reaches a similar conclusion. In the prebiblical natural order, he writes, “the goals of human activity remain partly political (within a micropolis or a macropolis), partly individualistic, and partly intellectualistic, since pure knowledge of the constant laws of the universe appears to be the most noble thing man can strive for.”Ibid. Yet such nobility falls short of the ultimate good. For Christian believers “are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone” (Eph 2: 19,20). In sum, only Christ brings the stability of divine goodness into the fragility of human lives and makes the human person a participator in the divine life.

If by a truly virtuous life we mean to refer to a comprehensive account of the good and perfect life for men and women, then only charity can make this possible for each person. Only the theological virtue of charity ensures that everything that a person does reaches the optimum expression of our human capacities. This view does not require that one implement sharp and rigid distinctions between grace and nature; rather it recognizes what every Christian must accept, namely, that the justification of the sinner results only from God’s gracious benevolence. The gift of grace alone perfects the human person so that he or she can reasonably expect to follow Jesus’s command: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5: 48). Since human nature diversely relates to the immanent and transcendent ends that constitute its perfection, there is no “layering” of grace onto nature. “Personal and social fulfillment are harmonized only in the Resurrection of Christ,” says von Balthasar, “who is the guarantee not only for the fulfillment of the individual but also for the Church community and through her for the whole world so that God, without eliminating the reality of the world, can be ‘all in all.’ ““Nine Theses” (9), p. 120.

It remains to discuss how charity affects the development of the human virtues. According to the classical theological tradition, charity constitutes the form of the virtues, for it exercises an influence on the other virtues principally in the line of efficient causality. In other words, charity explains why the other theological virtues of faith and hope and the cardinal moral virtues operate fully in the Christian life. Historically, some theologians have opted to describe the relationship of charity to the other virtues principally in terms of formal exemplary causality, but this only results in making every virtue look as if it were a species of charity. So while the proposal possesses its own sort of appeal, especially in light of the New Testament insistence on the primacy of love in the Christian life, it actually hampers the development of an adequate theological ethics. In other terms, the moral theologian needs to describe the Christian moral life by taking full account of the various life situations that require a specific virtuous response. At the same time, it is clear that final causality remains an important consideration for determining how charity relates to the other virtues. If charity addresses Christian morals at the most personal level, then this virtue must influence the world of personal intentions and meanings that shape a moral action in an ultimate sort of way.

Every moral action receives a relatively complete determination from its moral object - what moral theologians call its finis operis. But a moral meaning embodied in a particular action suitably defined also receives a second moral determination from the interior act of the will with which it is imperated or commanded. For example, to speak an untruth with the purpose of causing mental anguish to the person whom one deceives makes the action not only a violation of justice, but also of kindness. Again, for one to fast with the added purpose of praising God makes his or her action not only an act of temperance but also an act of the virtue of religion (latria). As an efficient cause that makes the virtues operate in a way that conforms entirely to the teaching and promises of the Gospel, charity transforms a virtuous deed from within. In this way, as Origen says, Christ becomes the very substance of the virtues.

Since it can imperate every human action towards the ultimate good of beatitude, charity effects this purposing in every one of the virtues. Just as any sin can take on an added negativity when it is done out of hateful malice for either God or man, so anything done for the love of God achieves a different dimension than otherwise would be the case. The Salmanticenses, a group of Discalced Carmelite theologians who taught at Salamanca roughly between 1600 -1725, set forth the following account of the relationship or ordo of charity to the other virtues.

Although this ordering (ordo) [of charity] lies beyond the species of a given virtuous act, which it receives from its object and proximate end, nonetheless it would be wrong to consider it as something sheerly accidental to virtue. Rather charity remains something that belongs to the heart of virtue (per se) and for which, moreover, the virtues themselves long.See Salmanticenses, Cursus theologicus, IIa-IIae, q. 23, a. 8, n 45.

Christian life, in short, is the only real form of human life. The Carmelite theologians explain the place of infused virtue in theological ethics in such a way as to make it normative for human life. But note that even though Christian virtue makes one simply a lover of God, the virtue of charity itself remains formally distinct from the other moral and theological virtues, even if without charity there is no virtuous life in the full and unqualified sense of the term. So even if one granted the hypothesis that the human person could acquire the ensemble of human virtues on his or her own efforts, no person can unaidedly realize the dispositio perfecti ad optimum, the best that human nature can achieve in grace, for that is to be found only in beatific union with God. Cajetan supplies the following explanation of how charity forms the other virtues.

Thus it is that the virtues possess this order to a “form-ed” action; the informing (formatio) is from charity as it alone orders the act of every virtue towards the ultimate end in an unqualified fashion. For this reason, charity is said to be the form of the virtues, namely, that it constitutes them in the full, existential possession in what true virtuousness consists (tanquam constituens eas in esse virtutis simpliciter).In secundam secundae q. 23, a. 6, ad 2. See also ad 1 for Aquinas’s account of why it is better to love things that are superior, e.g., man’s love for the angels, even though in knowing things, the intentional reality of the known corresponds in dignity to the being of the knower. Thus, whatever is received is received after the manner of the recipient (see Summa theologiae Ia q. 84, a. 1).

For the Christian believer, the life that the New Testament describes and enjoins upon us does not constitute one alternative among many for achieving a happy life. Nor does it amount to an illusory palliative for weak people, as Nietzsche suggests is the final result of Christian life and worship. The Christian life, animated by theological charity, provides the only way for the human person to reach the full perfection of human existence and to avoid the disintegrating effects of original sin.The 20th-century French theologian Henri de Lubac, in his Brief Catechesis on Nature & Grace, accuses the standard theology of the neo-scholastic period of reading Cajetan’s language concerning the essence of virtue as if a natural human life could be sufficient for some persons. Thus de Lubac and those who followed him react strongly against any suggestion of layering the supernatural onto the natural. But gratia perficit naturam does not imply that human nature in itself forms a de-supernaturalized clone of the Christian saint. If we take Aquinas’s moral theology in context, to be fully moral means to be on the way to God, on the way to beatific fellowship with God. A supernatural human act is an oxymoron, but a human action ordered by theological charity to the end of beatific fellowship is quite different. These charitable sorts of virtuous actions lead us to heaven, and at the same time they build up the unity of the Church on earth. There is a continuity between the process that grace begins here below and the love that, as St Paul tells us, abides forever: “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13: 13). For Cajetan, only this sort of life produces the “esse virtutis simpliciter,” the outright being of virtue lived in the context of a full and happy life.

We have seen that theological charity loves God above all things and on account of his lovableness, but the Christian life involves others besides self and God. The New Testament makes it abundantly clear that Christian love by its very nature reaches out and embraces the whole order of creation: “And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also” (1 Jn 4: 21). In Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 25, aa. 1-12, Aquinas undertakes a detailed discussion of what he calls the objects of charity. In this discussion which still merits close study, Aquinas distinguishes the classes of people who comprise the Church, so as to order them within the unity of the one bond of love. In other words, Aquinas identifies the classes of persons that concretely form the communicatio of charity. Indeed, the Gospel itself requires such an inquiry, for in imitation of her Lord, the Church as a whole must respond to the question, “And who is my neighbor?” (Lk 10: 29).

The New Testament unequivocally speaks about the primacy of charity in the life of the believer. This means that any person can authentically love only on account of his or her share in that unique communicatio which God establishes within the human family through the incarnation of his only Son. But so that theological charity does not become indistinguishably conflated with other forms of human affectivity nor the Church mistaken for whatsoever human community, the moral theologian must examine carefully what makes for divine charity. For this reason, Aquinas’s method requires that we establish the membership of the communicatio strictly in terms of the ratio formalis objecti of charity. In one of his sermons, St Leo the Great expresses the defining element of charity in this way:

For the man who loves God it is sufficient to please the one he loves; and there is no greater recompense to be sought than the loving itself; for love is from God by the very fact that God himself is love.Sermon 92, chap. 1 (PL 54: 454).

Only the good God then is the First Friend for every member in the communicatio of charity; and his unlimited goodness subsequently forms the radical ground for every manifestation of authentic friendship. First of all, charity embodies a befriended friendship. And since it represents the human person’s limited participation in divine love, the virtue of charity always remains a created endowment.

At the same time, the gospels make it clear that even though God alone is the sole explanation for charity, other persons, whom the New Testament refers to as “neighbor,” can enter into the communicatio. The new commandment explicitly speaks about these relationships when it enjoins that “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself (Lk 10: 27). And in his last discourse, Jesus himself says: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (Jn 13: 34). Who are the neighbors that this fundamental gospel injunction requires that we love as ourselves; or to put it differently, which persons are included in the communicatio of theological charity?

While divine beatitude in itself imparts to charity its formal unity, the love of divine charity moves beyond the three persons of the blessed Trinity. In other words, the true love of charity does not stop with God; it embraces creatures as well. Historically, people have held diverse views on this subject. Some thinkers argue that nothing divine really infiltrates the created order, while others have upheld the opposite view, namely, that “divine” represents nothing more than the epitome of human consciousness. However, it is a distinctive feature of catholic doctrine to take analogy seriously. Even though there exists but one ratio diligendi for theological charity, i.e., God as the highest good, we know in Christian faith that this theological charity opens out to include all those whom God himself has predestined for glory.

The Christian believer loves everything simply because of God, not as God nor as much as God, but on account of the divine goodness. This means that divine charity must adapt itself to the specific situation of what in technical language we identify as its secondary material objects. But how does one’s friendship with God become a love for all creation? The theological habitus of charity instrumentally accomplishes this effusion of divine love in the world by shaping the affective movements of the charitable person to the way and degree that the “material object” participates in the communicatio beatitudinis. In other words, the virtue of charity makes it possible for us to love others according to the measure that God has made them loveable. Aquinas puts it this way:

Charity loves God because of himself, and because of him loves all others in so far as they are subordinated to him. Hence, in a certain way we love God in all our neighbors, for to love another in charity is to love him because he is in God or so that God may be in him. But if we were to love our neighbor just for his own sake, and not for God’s, this would belong to another kind of love, either based on natural ties, or on citizenship or on any of those loves which Aristotle touches on in Ethics viii, 3.Quaestio disputata de caritate, trans. John P. Reid, O.P. (Providence, 1960), a. 4.

Thus, the uniqueness of Christian charity lies in that it seeks above all to bring about the moment when, to repeat von Balthasar’s phrase, “God, without eliminating the reality of the world, can be ‘all in all.’ “

Charity embraces in its affective movement both persons and things; however, only persons are loved as friends; things are loved in reference to persons, as goods wished to the friend. The embrace of charity directly involves all those who are called to share in the communicatio of beatitude. Aquinas supplies three reasons for why what derives from theological charity is confined to the human and angelic community. First, since one cannot will the good to a brute animal, the sub-human cannot encompass the ratio boni. Secondly, authentic fellowship requires intelligence or the spiritual dimension of life, but there is no context for such exchange among animals. Thirdly, one cannot identify in infra-rational creation the required proportion that must exist between the members in a communicatio that entails reciprocal benevolence.

Since persons constitute the only true terms of the love of benevolence, they alone are the true “objects” of charity. Three categories are to be considered: God, ourselves, and the neighbor. The proper and formal object of course is God, the Principal Friend to whom everything is referred; God alone remains the reason why we love ourselves and our neighbor. Next, each believer constitutes an object of charity for him or herself. Then, charity goes out to the neighbor, both angels and men, who either participate in or are called to participate in the fellowship of God’s love (communicatio beatitudinis).

There are two distinct ways in which charity relates us to others: First, as a friend of God and, therefore, as our friend in sharing God’s love, or alternatively, as an object, i.e., as God’s thing, referred to God unto his honor and glory. In the final instance, the neighbor is not loved precisely as a person to whom one wishes the goodness of God, but as a “thing” that one wishes unto God, for his honor and glory.Cajetan develops these points in his commentary on Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 25, a. 1. This last category includes the sinner who de facto is not a friend of God. Hell represents the state of a person permanently excluded from incorporation into divine friendship, reduced as it were to a “thing” whose punishment also reflects the divine attributes. Of course, before the final judgment we cannot say for certain that any particular human person exists in hell, so until the moment of judgment even the hardened sinner is to be loved so that he or she might again become God’s friend.

Christian charity embodies an eminently personal reality, one, moreover, that exists according to diverse measures in each individual. Furthermore, because everyone is not equal by reason of his or her actual participation in beatitude, we need suitable distinctions when determining the following questions. First, how are we to love ourselves in charity? Next, how are we to love our neighbor? And among the neighbors to be loved, we must consider how believers move out in love toward sinners, their enemies, and even the spiritual creatures.

First, the gospel requires us to love ourselves properly. “Just as unity is presupposed to union,” says Aquinas, “so our love for ourselves is the model and root of friendship; for our friendship for others consists precisely in the fact that our attitude to them is the same as to ourselves.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 25, a. 4. Aristotle remarks that “friendly feelings towards others flow from a person’s own feelings towards himself or herself.”Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 9, chap. 4 (1166al); also see, chap. 8(1168b5). We should recall that charity surpasses mere egoism; authentic self-love never apes self-centered and egoistic love. When we love ourselves in charity, we love ourselves as befriended by God, for charity numbers us among his true friends. Aquinas identifies the ability to love oneself as the “root” (radix) and “model” (forma) of all charity. In an especially touching section of her autobiography, St Therese of Lisieux casts a different light on this important element of Christian teaching.

This year, dear Mother, God has given me the grace to understand what charity is; I understood it before, it is true, but in an imperfect way. I had never fathomed the meaning of these words of Jesus: “The second commandment is LIKE the first: You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:39)… But when Jesus gave his Apostles a new commandment, his own commandment, as he calls it later on, it is no longer a question of loving one’s neighbor as oneself but of loving him as He, Jesus, has loved him, and will love him to the consummation of the ages. Ah! Lord, I know you don’t command the impossible. You know better than I do my weakness and imperfection; You know very well that never would I be able to love my Sisters as you love them, unless you, my Jesus, loved them in me. It is because you wanted to give me this new commandment since it gives me the assurance that your will is to love in me all those you command me to love! Yes, I feel it, when I am charitable, it is Jesus alone who is acting in me, and the more united I am to him, the more also do I love my Sisters.The Story of a Soul trans. John Clarke, O.C.D. (Washington, DC, 1976), pp. 220, 221.

This testimony helps us to see the proper ordering of God’s love, namely, that first we know in faith that God loves us because he is good, not because we are; next that we love ourselves in hope and charity as people here and now being loved by God; and finally from this bond of charity, we can move to an authentic love of self that forms the basis for the expansion of the communicatio.

Proper love of self also directs us to love our bodies as belonging to the whole person; there is no room for a disguised Manichaeism in Aquinas’s moral theology. At his death, St Francis of Assisi, recognizing that he had imposed difficult hardships on his mortal frame, asked forgiveness from his body, his “Brother Ass.” Proper love of our bodies does not exclude penitential practices from the Christian life, which always includes a place for asceticism. Indeed, charity impels us toward asceticism; it makes us long to move away from the taint of sin and from the corruption of punishment that it brings.

As the gospel command reminds us, we are required not only to love God and self but also our neighbor. When applied to those who are one with us in the communicatio, this command remains relatively simple. But how can sinners, who by definition are those who have exchanged the good of beatitude for the apparent goods of finite capacity, fit into this conception of charity? For by definition, the sinner is not God’s friend. Aquinas here introduces a helpful distinction: while it is true that sinners are not actual sharers in the communicatio beatitudinis, they still remain until death potential sharers in it. Charity urges us, then, to promote their return to God’s goodness. This means that we should love them in such a way as to ensure that they come to participate fully in the mystery of Christ’s love. Christ’s own example and his teaching, especially in the parables of the lost sheep and the prodigal son, amply emphasize this central Christian concern. Moreover, Christ’s death on the cross, as St Augustine explains, introduces a judgment of mercy into the world. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, the Doctor of Hippo writes:

If you pay attention, even the cross itself was a judgment seat; for when the judge was seated in the middle, the one thief who believed was freed (Lk 23: 43), the other who taunted was condemned. Now what would happen to the living and the dead was signified; some will be placed on the right, others on the left; the one thief is like those who will be on the left, the other like those who will be on the right.St Augustine, Tractatus super Joannem 31, c. 7 (PI 35: 1642).

Of course, the love of charity makes the Christian believer insatiably thirst that every sinner would come to appreciate the divine favor, and, like the good thief, would turn to Jesus on the cross, saying, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Lk 23: 42).

An incident in the life of St Dominic, his encounter with the Albigensian innkeeper, exemplifies the right approach to sinners. The story goes like this: By his willingness to eat and drink with a certain Provençal who had lapsed into heresy, St Dominic first shows his love for the innkeeper; then afterwards the saint stays up late into the night with the misled innkeeper to explain the truth of the gospel. Moreover, since sectarians frequently are involved in other sorts of immorality, we can suppose that the saint likewise rescued the innkeeper from errors about the moral life.

All sin entails activity that lacks the right ordering to the good ends of human prosperity and the ultimate end of divine beatitude. Therefore, St Augustine defines sin as “every word, action, or desire that goes contrary to the eternal law.”St Augustine, Contra Faustum Manichae Bk 22, chap. 27; see “Reply to Faustus the Manichean,” trans. R. Stothert in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. IV (Buffalo, 1887), pp. 155-345. This means that, by sinning, the sinner actually turns away from embracing in an ordered way the goods that God’s creative wisdom has constituted for the human person’s own happiness. Theological guilt or the liability to punishment that abides in the very disordered act itself subsequently may generate a species of psychological guilt. But the full and corruptive reality of guilt involves alienation from what is truly good. Such alienation, moreover, is not overcome simply by learning to feel right or comfortable with behavior that by its nature (ex objecto) falls short of both embodying the good of human flourishing and reaching the measure of divine love. Because of the human penchant for self-deception, charity obliges the believer sometimes to rouse the sinner from his or her false complacency.

Sin wrecks tremendous havoc in a person’s life. Indeed, because they are excluded from the communicatio of beatitude, sinners cannot love themselves.But this truth is meant not only for confirmed sinners, and Cajetan in fact uses this text as the basis for a Dominican examination of conscience. “Guard in your heart the conclusions of this article [q. 25, a. 7]: first, that evil is a sort of thing that makes it impossible for sinners to love themselves; and secondly that there are five signs of authentic self-love that can be found only in good persons, namely, to want to live a spiritual life in accord with recta ratio’, to want to develop within this life the good of virtue; to want to act so as to realize this; to be free of anxiety; and finally, to want to get along peacefully with others. Examine your conscience on these points if you want to know whether you are good or not, whether you truly love yourself, whether you truly are a friend to yourself. And do this frequently, at least once a day.” Only the Christian gospel preaches the kind of dignity that is fulfilling for human beings; those who place their confidence in some other god can discover no adequate and complete grounds on which to build an authentic self-love. “The work of the devil,” writes von Balthasar, “shows itself above all in a proud gnosis without love, which pretends to be coextensive with the agape that is submissive to God, but actually ‘puffs up’ (1 Cor 8: 1).”“Nine Theses” (4), p. 112. On the other hand, conversion and the experience of divine love through forgiveness beget true peace of mind.

The Christian must also love the neighbor who happens to be an enemy; an analysis of this issue requires another set of distinctions. For “enemy” can refer to personal enemies, or to the enemies of the communities to which we belong: the family, the fatherland, even the Church. The following conclusions illustrate some main points about loving an enemy: First, to love an enemy as such, i.e., sub ratione inimici, would be the same thing as to love a sinner as a sinner. Theological charity will not allow us to engage in moral persiflage of this kind. Still, we can recognize that there is a distinction to be made between a sinner and an enemy; the sinner remains someone who fails to keep God’s law, but a person can become an enemy through no personal fault. One example is the soldier enlisted in the service of an enemy army. In this case, the communicatio of charity first requires that the offense be removed - in the example of the soldier, whatever precipitated the hostilities - by the guilty party. This occurs through making restitution or satisfaction, so that the grounds for loving are re-established. At the same time, the teaching of the gospel enjoins us to love the individual enemy, even with a predilection that exhibits the perfection of charity (see Mt 5: 43-48). Philosophical ethics may discover utilitarian reasons for overlooking past offenses, but only Christ makes it possible to love the enemy in a way that transcends self-referential love.

Sometimes the enemy is not at all ferocious, as this incident in the life of St Therese of Lisieux points out. Her personal experience lived in faith illustrates the profound significance and importance of the Gospel teaching about loving other persons.

There is in the Community a Sister who has the faculty of displeasing me in everything, in her ways, her words, her character, everything seems very disagreeable to me. And still, she is a holy religious who must be very pleasing to God. Not wishing to give into the natural antipathy I was experiencing, I told myself that charity must not consist in feelings but in works; then I set myself to doing for this Sister what I would do for the person I loved the most. Each time I met her I prayed to God for her, offering Him all her virtues and merits. I felt this was pleasing to Jesus, for there is no artist who doesn’t love to receive praise for his works, and Jesus, the Artist of souls, is happy when we don’t stop at the exterior, but, penetrating into the inner sanctuary where he chooses to dwell, we admire its beauty. I wasn’t content simply with praying very much for this Sister who gave me so many struggles, but I took care to render her all the service possible, and when I was tempted to answer her back in a disagreeable manner, I was content with giving her my most friendly smile, and with changing the subject of the conversation, for the Imitation says: “It is better to leave each one in his own position than to enter into arguments.” Frequently, when I was not at recreation (I mean during the work periods) and had occasion to work with this Sister, I used to run away like a deserter whenever my struggles became too violent. As she was absolutely unaware of my feelings for her, never did she suspect the motives for my conduct and she remained convinced that her character was very pleasing to me. One day at recreation she asked in almost these words: “Would you tell me, Sister Therese of the Child Jesus, what attracts you so much to me; every time you look at me, I see you smile?” Ah! what attracted me was Jesus hidden in the depths of her soul; Jesus who makes sweet what is most bitter. I answered that I was smiling because I was happy to see her (it is understood that I did not add that this was from a spiritual standpoint).The Story of a Soul, pp. 222,223.

Christian maturity requires that we develop the proper kind of relationships, but only theological charity ensures that the full measure of Christ’s love controls our perspectives. Christian teaching on love for the enemy and for the disagreeable comes from St Paul’s strong insistence that the believer always seek first to overcome evil with good (Rom 12: 21).

The love that one renders to an enemy does not, by the very fact that she or he is an enemy, make the love a better one to pursue. In fact, all things being equal, to love a friend is both better and more meritorious. Cajetan makes clear this important point in the following text:

The principal reason is because the object of such a love is both better [objectively] and more closely joined to us [appreciatively]. Hence it is the case that being nearer to God, the friend is better; being nearer to the one loving, a friend is closer. Therefore the love of a friend conforms best to the measure of caritative love.Cajetan, In secundam secundae q. 27, a. 7.

This viewpoint strikes a strange note for those who hold that the more difficult is always the more meritorious, as happens in some schools of spiritual theology that recommend that one even look out for ways to agere contra, to go against the bent of our natural inclinations.

Charity breaks down all barriers, of nationality, of race, of class, of culture, but it also transcends the more profound, ontological barrier between the orders of creation. The communion of the Church reaches beyond the limits of the visible world. We know that creation includes other personal beings in addition to those whom we encounter in the visible world. And since the perfection of charity achieves the ultimate realization of personal communion, the Christian reaches out to the angelic persons who also, we are told, inhabit the new and celestial Jerusalem. On the other hand, those who are definitively excluded from the company of the saints, the damned and the demons, cannot be loved as God’s friends. Those in charity, however, may continue to regard them as God’s “things” that are given over to God’s honor which, in the case of the demons, at least, already manifests the divine justice.

Aquinas’s commentary on the objects of charity reflects the classical teaching of the Western theological tradition, namely, that God, the self, the neighbor, and the person’s body figure into the communicatio beatitudinis. In the De doctrina Christiana, St Augustine wrote: “There are four kinds of things a man must love, one is above him, namely God; another is himself; the third is close by him, namely his neighbor; and the fourth is beneath him, namely his own body.”Bk I, chap. 23, (PL 34, 27). Like the other theological virtues, charity remains formally one virtue. It possesses only one formal object, the good God in himself. However, this perfection can attract other ends without losing anything of the divine simplicity.

As we have seen, this does not mean that God is simply one among these objects; he is always the First Friend, the eminent and principal Object of charity. From all eternity, God exists as the basic and original communicatio beatitudinis. For God abides as a Trinity of divine persons who know and love each other in that perichoretic relationship that marks the mutual “being-in” of one person in the other as well as their mutual relationships. Because of the Trinitarian exemplar, no authentic friendship exists apart from a relationship to the communicatio of charity. Again, the Little Flower summarizes the superintending role of divine charity in our lives.

It is only charity that can expand my heart, O Jesus, since this sweet flame consumes it, I run with joy in the way of your NEW commandment. I want to run in it until that blessed day when, joining the procession of virgins, I shall be able to follow you in the heavenly courts, singing your new canticle (Ps 118:32) which must be LOVE.The Story of a Soul, p. 226.

The realization of charity in the world constitutes the Church; where love is, there is God. Through the capital grace of Christ, God unleashes his divine love into the world. And in the person of Christ, the Church finds the source of its life. Von Balthasar puts great emphasis on the Church as quasi una persona: “The Church of Christ is nothing else but the plenitude of this one Person… To the extent that Jesus’ work of salvation was accomplished ‘for all’, life in his community is at the same time both personalizing and socializing.”“Nine Theses “(2), p. 110. In order to benefit fully from so great a gift, the Christian lover needs to observe the right order of relationships that form the community of the Church.

“The perfect fulfillment of the will of the Father in the Person of Christ,” says von Balthasar, “is an eschatological, unsurpassable synthesis.”Ibid. As a goal, every Christian strives to achieve this synthesis in his or her life. But even within the communion of charity, conflicting claims can be put on our loving. The Church’s catechetical tradition, as I have said, recognizes four “objects” that charity must embrace: God, the self, the neighbor, and one’s own body.Aquinas addresses this subject in Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 26, aa. 1-13. So it is important to have a clear idea of how these objects relate among themselves, and in the case of conflicting situations, which class of persons takes priority over another. As star differs from star, charity differentiates one person from another within the one Body. Caritative love then must observe an ordering. The Christian tradition recognizes both a dialectical discovery of the good in another and the gradual development of our appreciation of God’s love in the members of the Church.

“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 Jn 4: 16). Charity for the neighbor brings our love for God to completion; it never spells its diminishment. This truth the New Testament makes quite clear: “Those who say ‘I love God,’ and hate their brother, are liars; for those who do not love a brother whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (1 Jn 4: 20). The following principles help to show how many and diverse persons fit into the communion of charity that, because God alone causes its realization, remains an “unsurpassable synthesis” of God’s will.

The first criterion for determining how someone should be loved in charity depends on how a given person actually participates in the communicatio beatitudinis. This criterion specifies how anyone is to be loved objectively in charity. There also exists an order of charity that is determined by the way interpersonal relationships actually develop between individual friends, between an I and a Thou. This sort of affective relationship can of course occur in diverse ways. For example, affection increases when a believer comes to recognize and to appreciate how much the divine love of benevolence in fact shapes the character of a friend. Or again, affective friendship also occurs in nature, for example, among the members of a family. In any event, this intimacy and closeness establishes the basis for another sort of loving, namely, appreciative love or the love of intensity. Thus the second criterion for reckoning how one should be loved in divine charity. Bearing in mind, then, the distinction between loving objectively and loving appreciatively, the following set of guidelines for exercising charity within the community of the faithful are applicable.

Because the formal object of charity is the divine goodness, charity first recognizes the absolute priority of divine love over all of the human participations in it. This holds true even though, as 1 John 4: 20 reminds us, the neighbor remains phenomenally more present to us than God.See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 26, a. 2, ad 1 It also means that charity gives priority to the divine love itself over an individual’s own interests and worth. Why? The individual’s worth depends upon his or her participation in the communicatio benevolentiae. This does not mean that by preferring the divine love to our own interests we become forced into a continual stream of self-diminishment, for we know that the person who loves God is drawn into the perfecting love of beatitude and is thereby “fulfilled” in the most radical sense. Thirdly, because the person is a per se unum composed of body and soul, charity establishes the priority of self-love over love of neighbor. In other words, the self embodies an ontologically strong reality, a unity, that surpasses the caritative union that exists between friends. This principle, however, rests both on the fact that the spiritual powers of the soul represent the human person’s true dignity and that the spiritual powers of knowledge and love communicate to the whole rational supposit a special excellence. As a corollary to the principle that the self enjoys priority over the neighbor in charity, each person ought to love his or her body in true charity.

When Aquinas turns to consider the priorities that exist among the various members of the Mystical Body, he firmly rejects the hypothesis that love is egalitarian.Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 26, a. 6: “Sed hoc irrationabiliter dicitur!” Christian love, in fact, displays preferences for one neighbor over the other. The preferential mode of loving takes into account both God and the person who loves, and “the nearer the ‘object’ is to either of these,” says Aquinas, “the dearer it is.”Ibid. On this account, God first loves the blessed Virgin Mary more than he loves the other saints because by reason of the grace that he gave her, she is the closest human person to God. God’s preferential love for Mary, however, is not a “closed” love, for it establishes her at the center of the Church. “Mary is the archetype and first cell of the Church,” explains von Balthasar, “and when the Church participates in Mary’s disposition, the Church is the Body of Christ in full truth.”Von Balthasar, The Threefold Garland, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco, 1982), p. 33. To take another example, St Paul instructs us “to work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith” (Gal 6:10). What reason can we assign for this preferential love, other than the fact that Christian faith unites one to another in what von Balthasar describes as a continuous movement toward the Church’s own center, which, in Mary, already contains full reality. The order of charity, however, does not constrain love nor engender a sectarian spirit, for the “Church remains open to the world, just as Christ is open to the Father and his all-embracing Kingdom (1 Cor 15: 24).”“NineTheses”(2),p. 111.

Thus, when it comes to making a judgment about which persons are to be loved and according to what criteria, we must recall the distinction between objective loving and intense or appreciative loving. The objective love of charity looks to the specific goodness of the neighbor as this participates in the communicatio benevolentiae, whereas the intensive or appreciative love of charity flows from the felt closeness or intimacy that exists, based either on nature or acquired friendship, between two persons. The following general theses illustrate this paramount distinction according to the four categories of charity, God, the self, the neighbor, and one’s body. First, God is to be loved both objectively and appreciatively above ourselves and our neighbors. Second, the Christian should love himself or herself more appreciatively than the neighbor, though objectively less if the particular neighbor shares more in the communicatio benevolentiae. Thirdly, the Christian should love the neighbor more than his or her own body, although one is required to sacrifice one’s natural life only for the benefit of another’s eternal salvation. St John Chrysostom reflects on these priorities when he tells Christians that you “must surrender everything but your faith: money, body, even life itself. For faith is the head and the root; keep that, and though you lose all else, you will get it back in abundance.”St John Chrysostom, “Homily on Matthew” 33, 1,2 (PG 57, 389 - 390).

Among the various neighbors that charity requires us to love, we can distinguish between common cases and particular instances. First, as a common rule, we should love objectively better people more than those who are close to us, even if we love more intensely our ungodly intimates than we do a holy stranger. Again, we should love more our family members, at least in those things that pertain to the natural bond, than we do those who are friends by election, e.g., through the vows of religion. Secondly and in particular, one should objectively love more a father and a mother, but children more intensely or appreciatively than parents. Aquinas goes on to propose that anyone in charity should objectively love fathers more than mothers and wives, even though a husband must love his wife with greater intensity and appreciation than his father or children. As the prime natural analogue for the communicatio beatitudinis, the right ordering of relationships within the family remains central to Christian revelation. The casuist theologians used the above classifications for solving practical questions that involved either/or decisions, but it is sufficient to recognize that the ordering of charity in the Church exists because of the ordering within the blessed Trinity. Charity represents the communication of the divine goodness to the human creature; neither the contractual principles of self-determination nor the unrealistic principle of secular egalitarianism can coerce the utterly free gift of God that brings salvation in Jesus Christ.

The full realization of Christian communio takes place within the sacramental and juridical structures of the Church. Christ transforms every expression of human love, so by responding to a series of little questions about loving we come to appreciate the extraordinary consequences that divine charity makes in our lives. Because friendship is founded upon a reciprocal loving, this fact immediately raises the question whether charity is more realized in loving actively or in being loved. Aquinas explains that habitus by their very nature are chiefly ordained to those sorts of activity that are perfective of the one who possesses the habitus.See Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 49, a. 3. Like the other theological virtues, charity conforms to this dynamic, so that charity first of all directs our loving, and only indirectly does it regulate our being loved. However, according to the text, “Let us therefore love God: because God first has loved us” (1 Jn 4: 19), it is the very experience of this divine love that enables every believer to begin to love. William of St Thierry discovers this truth at the heart of the New Testament: “So, Lord, as the Apostle of your love tells us, you ‘first loved us’ (1 Jn 4: 10); and you love all your lovers first.”William of St Thierry, On Contemplating God, trans. Sr Penelope (Spencer, MA, 1970), no. 10. Moreover, when God loves a creature, we know that the creature, not God, is perfected.

The love of charity is to be distinguished from simple benevolence or plain goodwill on two counts. First, insofar as love issues from a sense-passion, it is marked with a certain intensity or desire. But Aristotle says that simple goodwill “does not involve intensity or desire.”Nicomachean Ethics Bk 9, chap. 5(1166b33). Again, charity’s loving differs from simple benevolence which issues from the rational appetite, for the virtue of charity requires that one establish a certain affective union between the lover and the beloved, whereas benevolence enables us to wish another well without requiring any such union. From a psychological point of view, benevolence represents a more general kind of disposition in the person; and, to be sure, one that precedes charity. For although the psychological roots of theological love lie in benevolence, it never reaches the perfection that describes charity alone. Only charity establishes an affective bond between the lover and the beloved; only charity represents the sort of deep-seated emotion that is so charged with ecstatic energy that it produces a certain familiarity or connaturality with the beloved “object.” In sum, then, simple goodwill can never substitute for divine charity.For an interesting application of this principle, see Dietrich von Hildebrand, Man and Woman (Chicago, 1966).

Charity loves God only because of his goodness; as I have said, even our love of God falls under the formal object of theological charity. In order to understand why one should love God for himself alone, we can investigate three lines of causality. First, in the line of final causality, the human person can discover no other or more ultimate motive for loving God than God himself. Why? No goodness exists other than what God himself possesses. Second, in the order of formal causality, we likewise recognize that the divine goodness cannot increase, so there exists no greater goodness that could provide a more compelling reason for loving God. Thirdly, in the order of efficient causality, we recognize that no cause of authentic loving exists other than what God makes possible for us in Christ. If we were to inquire whether the Christian loves God on account of anything besides God, then as far as these three categories are concerned, the theologian must reply negatively. Aquinas sums up the matter in this way:

For, being himself the last end of all things, there is no other end to which God is subordinate; nor does he need any other form to make him good, since his very substance is his goodness and the exemplar of all other goods; nor does his goodness derive from another, rather is God the source of whatever goodness there is in everything else.Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 27, a. 3.

However, there does exist a qualified way in which love for God is motivated by certain goods that are less than God himself, namely, when a person draws close to God as a result of hoping for the good things that he promises and of fearing the bad things that befall those who fail to make him their complete joy.

The love of benevolence (amor benevolentiae), or friendship, reaches out immediately to God. Even in this life, theological charity makes us directly and immediately adhere to God, and this without the benefit of any intermediaries. On the other hand, one can imagine reasons for thinking that theological love does in fact fall short of reaching God immediately. For example, one could argue that theological faith achieves knowledge of God only “through a glass in a dark manner” (1 Cor 13:12). But the will depends on the intellect for its illumination and direction, and so theological charity, since it remains a virtue of the will, cannot achieve a greater perfection than the faith that directs it. Again, sin weakens the human will so that we fall short in doing good to our neighbor. But loving God is a higher activity of soul, and so it seems unlikely that theological charity can reach God. Notwithstanding these kinds of objections, Aquinas contends that theological love must draw us immediately to God, for otherwise charity would not measure up to its full character as a love, but would exist only as an elaborate form of simple desire. And this sort of affective movement falls short of what the New Testament promises for full-bodied charity.

To affirm that the believer is capable of a full and immediate union with God in charity forms an important element of Catholic teaching on theological charity. By emphasizing the immediacy of charity, we do not in any way impugn the complete authenticity of those created instruments that help us to love God. The sacred humanity of Christ, the blessed Virgin Mary, the blessed sacrament of the altar and the other sacraments, the ministerial priesthood all contribute to building up the body of Christ. But when it comes to a believer loving God, none of these instruments stands as a medium between the lover and the God who is loved; or as von Balthasar insists, both Christ and Church “ ‘mediate’ only in immediacy.““NineTheses,”(2),p. 111. This point is especially significant since the truth of the Catholic faith obliges us to recognize that other creatures legitimately serve as necessary instruments for our salvation.

Consider two important examples for the everyday life of the Church: the roles of the blessed Virgin Mary and of the ordained priest. Neither Mary nor the priest “impede the immediate union of the faithful” with God in charity; rather, if one were to analyze these relationships correctly, God himself serves as the medium for our relationship with our blessed Lady and with the priest who acts in persona Christi. So, for example, the Second Vatican Council teaches that “all the saving influences of the blessed Virgin on humankind originate… from the divine pleasure.”Lumen gentium, no. 60, as cited in Pope John Paul II’s Redemptoris Mater, no. 38. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God constitutes both Mary and the ordained priest, though in diverse ways, as instruments of charity. Mary is made so through the grace of the Immaculate Conception and the priest by his sacramental configuration with Christ in Holy Order, “which equips and obliges him to be a living instrument of Christ the eternal priest and to act in the name and in the person of Christ himself.”Pope John Paul II, Pastores dabo vobis, no. 20. Accordingly, each believer is established in a certain ordination to Our Lady and to the priests of the Church, so that the members of Christ’s body are made proximately more receptive for growth in the divine love. This disposition does not imply that either Mary or priests serve as bridges between God and the believer, for the charity of this life always adheres directly to God. It is extremely urgent that priests and confessors communicate this understanding in their preaching and direction, for everyone is able to love God immediately and to be loved by him in the same way; indeed, no way other than immediately loving God stands open for us.

The Cistercian tradition offers a rich suite of commentaries on the text of the Canticle, “I to my beloved, my beloved to me” (Can 2:16). These monastic sermons point out that Christian joy remains bound up with the person’s ability to make an act of love that draws him or her into an immediate union with God himself. On this basis, believers are said to love God wholly: that is, every person who forms part of the communicatio benevolentiae loves God with his or her full human energies. This is true even though our limited capacities impede us from loving God in an infinite mode as his infinite Goodness would deserve.

But is it not possible that, through the power of God, we are capable of infinite love? At the beginning of the 14th century, Duns Scotus made just such an argument to prove the necessity of Christ’s creation. On his account, God would hope to possess in the incarnate Son a creature that was at last capable of returning the kind of love that marks the divine loving itself.For further discussion of Scots’s arguments, see “Duns Scotus, John” in New Catholic Encyclopedia 4 (New York, 1967), pp. 1102 -1106.

But no creature can exist that would be capable of loving God wholly, for such a creature would have to be infinite, and that involves a clear contradiction. Although no creature, not even the human will of the incarnate Son, can infinitely love God, it is still incumbent on every creature to love God without measure. Aquinas interprets the long tradition on the question of how much one should love God by concluding that, since theological charity reaches God immediately, there cannot be a question of any “more or less”; in loving God, there is never a question of excess. As St Bernard remarks, “The cause of loving God is God; the measure is no measure.”St Bernard, De diligendo Deo, chap. 1; see Bernard of Clairvaux, “On Loving God,” trans. Robert Walton, in Treatises II (Cistercian Fathers Series, 13; Kalamazoo, MI, 1980), pp. 43-132. Furthermore, the more prudently we love God, the better will our loving become. Even in the case of activities motivated by the theological virtues, prudence is required to ensure that we will duly observe the proper measures that our human limitations impose on us. So for example, people should not consider giving alms to the poor if they still have to meet unfulfilled contractual obligations, or attempt to offer a fraternal correction outside of the norms for its implementation.

The Christian tradition harbors no doubt that to love God is the most meritorious of all loving, and so this love deserves a great reward for its own sake. The whole movement of divine love tends toward the enjoyment of God. This holds good even if loving God entails less difficulty than loving the neighbor. It is the goodness of what is loved, not the difficulty of loving, that determines merit and virtue. Loving what is more difficult, then, does not constitute a better form of love, unless the more difficult also instantiates the better.See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae, q. 27, a. 8, ad 3. “For this love to which we are called,” writes von Balthasar, “is not a circumscribed or limited love, not a love defined, as it were, by the measure of our human weakness.”Von Balthasar, The Christian States of Life, trans. Mary Frances McCarthy (San Francisco, 1983) p. 27. It is a love measured only by God’s measureless desire to bestow it on us.

The scholastics reserved the Latin term diligere specifically to designate the act of theological charity. As faith’s proper action is believing and hope’s proper action is hoping, so charity’s proper act remains loving. Because Christian charity particularly extends to a number of special material objects, the theologian is able to distinguish certain activities that especially belong to the concrete practice of theological charity within the Church of faith and sacraments. Though each one of the activities that together make up the practice of Christian charity represents a whole range of virtues, the Christian tradition nevertheless identifies certain activities as particular expressions of dilectio. By reason of charity’s formal object, viz, to love God above all thing on account of his very goodness, these good deeds comprise a single class or set of actions.

Theological charity particularly attends to the specific ways that dilectio realizes itself in the world. Because these activities especially represent the flourishing of divine charity, theologians traditionally have called these special activities the fruits of charity.For an historical study of the fruits of charity, see Odon Lottin, Psychologic et Morale awe XHe et XIIIe siecles, 1.1: Problemes de Psychologic (Paris, 1942). An examination of the fruits of charity is distinct from the consideration of charity as the form of the virtues; for the fruits indicate specific kinds of activity that mark both the internal disposition and the external comportment of one who seeks to extend and enlarge the communicatio benevolentiae. In the treatise on charity, Aquinas identifies three internal fruits of charity, namely, joy, peace, and mercy, and three external fruits, namely, kindness or benevolence, almsgiving, and fraternal correction.Summa theologiae IIa-IIae, qq. 28 - 33. Each of these special acts of theological charity likewise possesses its own sort of vicious deformities. Hatred, for instance, stands opposed to the very act of love; acedia and jealousy check the joy of loving; discord and schism thwart the peace that charity produces; and finally, offensiveness and scandal hinder the good that fraternal correction seeks to promote.

Charity creates order and balance in the world. In one of his homilies, St John Chrysostom wrote, “More than anyone else, the Lord knows the true natures of created things; he knows that moderation, not a fierce defense, beats back a fierce attack.”Homily 33, 1.2 (PG 57: 389-390). Because the love of benevolence makes a person secure in the possession of the good, moderation brings about a joyful spirit. Joy represents the fruit of charity in our lives and not one of its pre-conditions. The gospel offers no guarantee that the sinner will experience joy from the first moment that he or she turns to Christ, and so only poor counsel directs the behaviorally weak to wait until their behavior changes before they make an act of charity. Judgments based predominately on feelings or emotions, the Christian tradition holds suspect. Good spiritual instruction will encourage everyone to start loving God immediately, so that as a result of these acts of charity, the rest of the virtuous life will develop harmoniously. The resulting joy comes from loving God himself. Jesus himself counsels his disciples: “When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (Jn 16: 21-22).

Joy also derives from beholding the glory of God that appears in his works, especially from loving the neighbor in theological charity, that is, a person who is both our friend and a friend of God. Because the believer in charity loves God, he or she also loves all that God has created. But this joy can suffer diminishment, for human creatures always remain subject to the evil of punishment (malum poenae) and the evil of fault (malum culpae). Still, the gospel instructs us to maintain hope that ultimately charity will reign; for God “will wipe every tear from their eyes” (Rev 21: 4). On that day, the saints will experience only the joy that comes from beholding God’s mercy and his justice. But while the Church continues to labor on earth, it does everything it can to ensure that the saints rejoice more and more on account of God’s mercy. So when a friend, for example, freely chooses a course of action that places him or her outside of the communicatio benevolentiae, the one who would exercise true Christian compassion will look for ways to draw the person back to the joy of loving God.

Authentic self-love also produces a joyful and self-forgetting spirit. The 14th-century Dominican mystic John Tauler explains how the saints can esteem others as their betters and still remain joyful. In one of his sermons, he describes St Paul’s ecstacy:

If I love God, I love St Paul’s rapture more in him than in me… And still, through charity that ecstacy also belongs to me. Charity does not suffer from sadness on account of the fact that it is not the first to experience something good. Rather it recognizes only the exultation that comes from knowing simply that one is before God, and that only by his gracious gift that lasts forever not only am I a glorious person, but also unique, singular, and privileged.John Tauler, Sermons, trans. Maria Shrady (Classics of Western Spirituality; New York, 1985).

Only the profound sadness of remaining in habitual sin inveighs against this sort of joyful disposition. Among the blessed, joy corresponds to the sure possession of the divine goodness in glory; in heaven all desire stops, though not even the saints merit strictly this joy. Rather God’s supreme benevolence draws them into it: “Enter into the joy of your master” (Mt 25:21 & 23). Joy does not constitute a virtue distinct from charity, “but it is a certain act or effect of charity.” And on this account, it is numbered first among the fruits of the Holy Spirit that St Paul lists in Galatians: joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5: 22).For Aquinas’s treatment of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, see Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 70, a. 1.

In the strict sense of the term, peace does not qualify as a specific virtue; however, because charity produces unity among God and humankind, peace eminently belongs with charity. Moreover, the fruit of peace implies two kinds of unions: the first kind of peace brings the sum of a person’s own desires into an ordered unity; the second establishes a union between one’s desires and those of another person. Charity accomplishes this first by focusing our desires onto the love of God and, secondly, by making us want to do what pleases the neighbor as if to do so actually suited our own will.

Mercy appropriately belongs with charity because it flows from the desire to relieve the wants of another; and on Aquinas’s account, this desire necessarily belongs to someone who is both noble and good. In a beautiful phrase, Aquinas expresses the special way that mercy pertains to God: “Love is the sole reason for God’s mercy, for he loves us as something of himself.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 30, a. 2, ad 1. Moreover, when true Christian mercy moves beyond mere sentiment and expresses the measure of right reason that guides the truth of life, veritas vitae, this fruit, unlike joy and peace, supplies the emotional balance that undergirds all human virtue. Aquinas combines his discussion of joy, peace, and mercy under the heading of the internal effects of charity, for he considers these qualities of soul as the chief traits that mark the interiority of the Christian lover. Obviously, these traits affect the external comportment of one who loves, but only to the extent that they first adorn the soul of the one who belongs to the communicatio benevolentiae.

Charity also produces special sorts of fruit that pertain to external expressions of human behavior that transpires within the communicatio benevolentiae. Aquinas identifies three such specific acts: beneficence, or kindness, almsgiving, and fraternal correction. First, kindness represents a general expression of charity. Although any number of virtues ordain that one show kindness or act beneficently toward a neighbor, there also exists a more general sense of beneficence that we show to our friends, and that especially flows from our loving them. Secondly, this general sort of kindness includes eleemosynary acts that traditionally form part of the Christian life. For the medieval theologians, almsgiving includes a broad range of spiritual and material relief, not just the giving of money to the destitute or needy.In Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 32, aa. 1-10, Aquinas takes the opportunity to examine specific questions related to the giving of alms. Thirdly, there is a specific form of spiritual assistance or alms that the tradition refers to as fraternal correction.

The New Testament itself speaks about fraternal correction as a service of charity (see Mt 18: 15 -17). And St Jerome points out that “we ought to take a brother aside to rebuke him, for fear that, having once lost all sense of shame or modesty, he may persist in his sins.”In Matthaeum III, chap. 18, v. 15 (PL 26, col. 136). Fraternal correction points an errant Christian toward the truth of God’s wise providence, towards appreciating how God knows the world to be. The virtuous practice of fraternal correction urges hope and filial fear onto those who habitually act outside of conformity to moral truth. Since fraternal correction often implies exhorting the sinner to relinquish an apparent good to which he or she is attached in some vicious way, the task of gently urging knowledge of the truth through correction is at once both urgent and difficult.

Because we sin daily, we need correction from others who love the truth. But in correcting a brother or sister, the Christian believer must pay close heed to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. The believer accomplishes this through the virtue of infused prudence, especially as it is helped by the gift of Counsel. The theological tradition maintains that fraternal correction expresses true charity, but mediated by mercy; it is, in effect, a species of almsgiving. Aquinas relates the connection in this way:

Accordingly, both charity and mercy dictate fraternal correction: charity in order that the one corrected might possess good the more; mercy in so far as the misery [of sin’s disorder] might be removed the sooner. Charity principally commands fraternal correction, but mercy does so secondarily. However it is prudence that both directs and shapes the very act of admonishing so that it might achieve the desired end of bringing about a change of heart in the one corrected.Cajetan, In secundam secundae q. 33.

From this it is clear that fraternal correction represents a particularly ecclesial action, for it combines the specifically evangelical qualities of mercy, charity, and prudence into the single exercise of a profound care and concern for the neighbor. For just as the gospel requires that we give to our brothers and sisters who are in material distress, so the same evangelical law enjoins those who participate in the love of benevolence that they relieve the members of Christ’s body that suffer from the spiritual distress of sin. But this work of transforming love can only happen in union with the suffering Christ. “Even if it is true that the purpose of the rules of the Church is to free the believer from the alienation of sin and to lead him to his true identity and freedom,” writes von Balthasar, “they may and indeed often must seem to be harsh and legalistic to the imperfect believer, just as the will of the Father appeared harsh to Christ hanging on the Cross.”“Nine Theses,” (1), p. 109. The person who would correct another virtuously must first turn to Jesus, so that his love and compassion will shine through the words and gestures of admonition.