Love, Chief Act of Charity

Charity consists in loving rather than in being loved.

Charity is active friendship and love. It is therefore something more than good will, which is the condition andthe beginning of friendship.

God is loved out of charity for his own sake, not on account of anything other than himself. Yet in one way we can love God out of charity, and still have something else in view, as when we love God for the favors we receive or expect, but in such a way that these very favors are loved because they dispose us to love God the more.

Even in this life, in which we are wayfarers, we can have an immediate love of God, that is, love without a medium between lover and beloved. We know God through the medium of created things; love moves the other way, for we love God first andthen love created things for the love of God.

We can love God wholly according to our owncreatural wholeness, but not according to the infinite wholeness of God. For we are finite, and cannot compass infinity.

We need no test or mode or measure in our love for God.St. Augustine says we need only go on measurelessly loving God.

It is, in itself, more meritorious to love a friend than to love an enemy, just as it is worse to hate a friend than to hate an enemy. But, considering that the love of a friend is likely to be less purely the effect of love of God, and also considering the distaste and difficulty that one must overcome to love an enemy, we see that it can be more meritorious to love an enemy than to love a friend.

To love God is more meritorious than to love one’s neighbor. Indeed, to love one’s neighbor is a meritorious act only when we love him for the sake of God.