CHARITY - Part Three of The Three Theological Virtues

This is Part Three of our posts on the Three Theological Virtues - Faith, Hope, & Love. You can read part one HERE and part two HERE.

    The third and greatest of the theological virtues is charity, often referred to as love. The Catechism tells us that charity “is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.” As virtue is a means to this end-namely, loving God-charity orders all other virtues, as they derive their source and proceed from it. Charity is “the goal of…Christian practice.” It is what Christ seeks in all of us and what He Himself practiced perfectly during His life on earth.

    While we can avoid truth, we can never escape it. One of the substantial facts is that we are made by God, Who is the Supreme Being, the Source of Life, and in Whom only we will find our joy. To practice charity is the natural response to the acknowledgement of this undeniable truth. It is the key to opening the door to a profound relationship with our heavenly Father. Through loving God above all things, we no longer put importance into the things that distract us from knowing Him. In knowing Him, we will begin to find God everywhere, in everything, for the artist is always distinguishable in his works. Flowing from this, we are then able to love those things, not as things, per se, but as Him Who we find in them. It is through charity that we are formed in this way, and it becomes a simple and beautiful cycle: the more we love God, the more that love overflows into our love for others; the more we love others, the more we see God in them and the greater our love for Him becomes.