Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Periodically through this new year, we're going to offer some various counsels for having a healthy and holy spirituality and incorporating St. Thérèse of Lisieux's thoughts into our reflection as well. We'll begin today with the first counsel, which is charity, which is what was talked about in the first reading. “Make love or charity your aim,” tells us St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 14:1.
Charity has two targets. The big target is God, since He is love itself and is the source of all love and goodness. And within that target is a smaller target, which is our neighbor. When Jesus says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39), the word “neighbor” in the original text is a Greek word, plesion, which means the person near or nearby you. God thinks highly of us, and He is so thoughtful that He tells us that when we love those around us, we're actually loving Him. Think of how your treatment of someone's child resonates and reverberates in the heart of their good mother. It's a small glimpse of how our treatment of others resonates in the heart of Go
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The Catechism at number 25, quoting from the Catechism of Trent, actually, says this: “The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope, or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other object or objective than to arrive at love,” says the Catechism again, number 25.
So love is the greatest virtue, as St. Paul notes in 1 Corinthians 13:13, so a healthy and a holy spirituality will have the two great commandments front and center. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment, and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets,” Jesus says in Matthew 22:37-40.
So how do I love God? Well, St. John tells us in 1 John 5:3, it's by keeping His commandments. By living how He calls us to live, by doing His will, by sharing our life with Him. And how do I love the person near to me? Well, by wanting good for them and doing good for them and to them. Christian love is a choice, and our choices are rooted in our will. This is why the Lord can command us to love our enemies, meaning the people that we don't like or that don't like us for whatever reason. I don't have to like someone to do what's good or loving for them. I can choose to do good to the people around me in spite of feelings of antipathy, hurt, dislike, or aversion towards them.
Charity begins in our thoughts, so we should ask the Lord for the grace to cultivate thoughts of goodwill towards others, simply praying those words, “Lord, help me to cultivate thoughts of charity and goodwill towards others.” Just praying that is a step in the right direction because charitable thoughts lead to charitable words, charitable actions, and charitable responses.
Jesus even gives us specific guidelines for how to love those who we don't like or who are difficult for us to love. He says, “Do good to those who hate you, bless (meaning speak well) of those who curse you, pray for those who abuse or mistreat you.” It's Luke 6:27-28. And then He adds not to retaliate against them and actually to be willing to part with our belongings too, verse 29. And He says in Luke 6:31, “As you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.”  How to translate that verse into my own words: it would be this—see others, even your enemies, as another you. See them as another you. Why does God want us to be loving towards those who don't love us? Very simply so that they can see Him in us. As Jesus says, “For even the Lord is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish” (Luke 6:35). You know, many people have never encountered the Lord because they have yet to see Him in us.
You may even ask, “Well, what does a charitable person even look like?” Well, St. Paul gives us a sketch of love's calling card when he says that love is patient and kind. “Love is not jealous or boastful, not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it's not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
You can think of charity as an art, and you are the artist. Like all artists, you have to work within your abilities and within your limitations, knowing that you will make mistakes. Good artists try to avoid making mistakes, but great artists learn from their mistakes, and they're not afraid to make mistakes. The Lord wants us to be great artists in regards to charity, not just good ones. So mistakes will be made, but that's okay. And just as great artists usually aren't well appreciated during their lifetime, so too often others won't appreciate the small and even generous acts of charity that you perform for them. The good news, however, is that God sees and appreciates all of them, each and every act, no matter how big or how small.
The Lord also promises that the harder a person is to love, the greater the reward will be for doing good to them. The more challenging the work of art is, the greater it will be. This is why great works of art are usually called the artist's labor of love because they're usually very costly and difficult. In the difficult moments with the difficult people and sometimes with our difficult selves, we need to ask the Lord for the grace to be charitable.
The Lord even goes so far as to tell St. Catherine of Siena in her Dialogue: He says, “Whatever you do in word or deed for the good of your neighbor is a real prayer.” He says, “Every sin committed against Me is done by means of your neighbors.” And He says, “Every virtue of yours and every vice is put into action by means of your neighbor.” So our neighbors and even our family members are our charity thermometers. They help reveal the state of our soul and the true value of our spirituality.
I've taken up the practice when I pray the Rosary privately to ask Jesus at the end of each decade for the grace to be kind and patient and charitable because I know that charity is a struggle for me, and yet it needs to be the target that I'm aiming at in life.
For her part, St. Thérèse of Lisieux says, “How easy it is to please Jesus, to delight His heart. One is only to love Him without looking at oneself, without examining one's faults too much,” she says. “True love, true charity takes the focus off of me, and it puts it on the Lord and on loving and serving others.” “Directors,” she says, “have others advance in perfection by having them perform a great number of acts of virtue, and they are right. But my director, who's Jesus, teaches me not to count up my acts. He teaches me to do all with love, to refuse Him nothing, to be content when He gives me a chance of proving to Him that I love Him. But this is done in peace, in abandonment. It is Jesus who is doing all in me, and I'm doing nothing,” she writes.
Thérèse also wrote this: “I understand so very well that it's only through love that we can make ourselves pleasing to the good God and that love is the one thing I long for. The science of love is the only science I desire. Charity, she adds, consists in disregarding the faults of our neighbor, not being astonished at the sight of their weakness, but in being edified by the smallest acts of virtue that we see them practice.”  As the thoughts of charity, the words of charity, and the works of charity increase in our life, the feelings of charity will grow as well because our heart will become more like the heart of Jesus and the heart of Our Lady, and their hearts are tender, affectionate, and very loving as well.
A few days before her death, when someone read to St. Thérèse a passage that dealt with eternal beatitude, she remarked, “This is not the thing that attracts me, but love. To love, to be loved, and to return to earth to make love loved.”  So when our time is concluded in this world and we pass over to the next, what will matter most is whether or not we have charity in our souls, meaning whether or not we die in a state of grace, essentially. So if charity is at the center of my spirituality, then gradually the fruits of that healthy spirituality will be more evident in my life. The fruits of charity, as St. Paul identifies, as joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, self-control, chastity, modesty, generosity (Galatians 5:22-23). And if the spirituality that I've embraced is encouraging or fostering within me self-righteousness, fear, paranoia, anger, bitterness, criticism, pride, vanity, dissension against the Church, or if it's making me feel superior to others, be assured that it's not from the Lord. Don't let beautiful externals or noble ideals or pious-sounding words fool you. As St. Paul says, “If I don't have love or charity, I'm nothing and I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2-3).
So let's ask Our Lady for the grace to prioritize love and charity in our spiritual life. Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.