Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
We're going to continue our series on Franciscan spirituality today, talking a little bit about social life.
Last time we spoke about the importance of law and justice in the social life.
To law and justice must be added charity, so we'll say a word about that today.
Strict justice doesn't guarantee the integrity of the social order and won't guarantee to suppress all the abuses that come fro m human egoism.
In reality, where there is the strictest legality, great injustices can be committed at the same time.
It's necessary for there to be a sort of soul in the social structure itself, in the relations of people amongst themselves, and that soul is what we call charity.
Natural law demands that we render good for good, even the Gentiles do that, Jesus says in Matthew 5:47, but to render good for evil, to be good to those who do evil, transcends the justice of the scribes and the Pharisees, again to borrow from our Lord, Matthew 5:20.
This is the fruit of charity which Jesus, the perfecter of the law, enkindles among his followers.
Justice places one person in front of the other, creating a cold, external relationship between them, simply commanding that which is due.
Only charity, the generous moderator of the social life, unites people from within in sincere relations of true fraternity.
St. Bonaventure says that the law of charity makes it so that in the corporeal members and in the members of the commonwealth, one member supplies for the want or lack of the other.
Charity, therefore, says, Bonaventure, and we'll quote him at length here, is the force of properly ordered attraction and the bond of perfect union.
It maintains order as regard to the different objects of love and our desire for them and their effect upon us, yet it possesses oneness in its inner disposition as regards the one end and the one, meaning God, most to be loved, upon whom depends our love for all other beings destined to be tied with a bond of love within the one Christ as in the body to the head, a body containing all those to be saved.
Such oneness, says Bonaventure, begins on earth but is consummated in eternal glory conforming to the prayer of the Lord, the prayer that Jesus said at the Last Supper.
We remember when he said that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me that they may be perfected in unity, Jesus prayed in John 17.
So St. Bonaventure teaches that charity, supernatural love, is like a weight which makes our being gravitate towards others.
It's an inclination which launches us out of ourselves towards others who are distinct from us.
Natural love, on the other hand, aims more at receiving than at giving.
It's often stuffed with egoism and limits itself to blood relations or friends or race or ethnicity, therefore it's not a very social love.
On its better days and its better manifestations, natural love is inclined towards helping others inasmuch as they're members of the human race and can only complete themselves in the whole human structure.
This union of similarity and intimacy is the foundation of a natural love towards others.
It has a greater social contribution more so than the love that's egocentric, but it's still just natural, still just very limited.
Charity or supernatural love which inclines us to God has an absolute primacy.
It knows no obstacles, it has as its boundaries only the universe itself.
It induces us to love God and our neighbor in whom we see the image of God, or we should see the image of God, and to love our neighbor for the love of God too.
Saint Bonaventure would say the love of charity takes away the crookedness of nature, meaning our fallen nature.
This love of charity which brings people together in a supernatural brotherhood is indefectible by nature and is the most perfect love, therefore it's the most social, because it induces us to love others in God, be they rich or poor, noble not so noble, family or strangers, friends or enemies.
So for the social order, justice isn't enough, charity is also needed, or rather justice needs to be exercised in charity.
Franciscan spirituality organically and synthetically ties the natural order to the supernatural order.
Without the supernatural order it's impossible to have a healthy social life.
In this way human solidarity enters into the sphere of the sacred, and the impulse from which it's governed is purified and elevated at the same time.
And the entire dynamic of charity is to be centered on Christ, and it is centered on Him.
God, who is loved by means of Christ, by whom He created and redeemed us, keeps all of humanity bound to Himself.
In the mystical body of Christ, people loving each other develop true intimacy.
Same faith and the same hope joins them together, and the same eternal ideal drives them unceasingly to bear fruit through grace in works of charity, and of justice too.
And St. Bonaventure in his Breviloquium writes this, and we'll close with this quote.
He says the way to Christ is either through faith or through the sacrament of faith, meaning the sacraments.
Yet faith in Christ is the same in all believers, past, present, and future.
And thus Christ's influencing power affects all men.
Those who are gone, no less than those living now, or yet to come into being, alike those believing in Christ and those reborn in Him.
Those bound to Christ by faith and those who, through an inpouring of grace, become His members in temples of the Holy Spirit, and thus sons of God the Father, joined to one another by the unbondable, unbreakable bond of love.
And this bond, says Bonaventure, is not destroyed by the passing of time, any more by distance of space.
The just of all times and places constitute the one mystical body of Christ, in that they receive both perception and motion from the one head that influences them, through the fontal, radical, and original fullness of all grace that dwells in Christ, the fountainhead.
So let's ask Our Lady today for the grace to not only make our society more just, but let's also ask Her for the grace to make it a more charitable place to live in as well.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.