Charity

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

A number of years ago in Dublin, on a radio talk show, the speechwriter of the Vice President of the United States was interviewed. He was talking about how interesting it was to be the speechwriter of the Vice President of the United States.

He said there was only one of him, and so he had direct access to the Vice President whenever he wanted. But, he said, in the case of the President there were about twenty speechwriters, and all their work had to be very carefully vetted before it was released.

He told a story of a speechwriter in the 1960s during the time of the Johnson administration. He wasn't very happy that a lot of his work was not seeing the light of day.

He also felt that he deserved a raise, and he asked Johnson for that raise, which was refused. He decided that he would quit. But before he quit, he would write one last speech.

Usually all the speeches were gone through very carefully. But if the President was on tour, the first time that he might be reading the speech could be when he was actually on the platform.

This fellow bided his time and waited for his opportunity, which came when the President was addressing 6,000 rich Democrats in South Carolina.

This fellow slipped in his speech. The first few pages went very well, but about halfway down on the fourth page, it read, ‘Do you want me to tell you how I'm going to solve the problem of unemployment in this country in the next three months? I’m going to tell you right now how I'm going to solve the problem of unemployment in this country in the next three months.’

He was a bit surprised that he would make such a statement.

The next paragraph, it said, ‘And do you want me to tell you how I'm going to curb inflation in this country in the next six months? I'm going to tell you right now how I'm going to curb inflation in this country in the next six months.’

Again, he was a bit surprised. These were very rash statements to be making. He was beginning to wonder what was coming on the next page.

The last paragraph said, ‘And do you want me to tell you how I'm going to end the war in Vietnam? I'm going to tell you right now how I'm going to end the war in Vietnam.’

Now he was breaking out into a cold sweat, wondering what on earth is coming on the next page.

He turned over the page and there were just a few words there which said, ‘You're on your own now, baby.’ He was left high and dry.

Our Lord has given us the greatest commandment, the commandment of charity, which says, “Do unto others as you would like done unto yourself” (Luke 6:31).

Notice it's a positive command. Our Lord doesn't say, ‘Don't do to other people what you would not like them to do to you.’ It's doing things to people.

Charity is dynamic. It's progressive. It's proactive. We express our charity with words, with deeds, with little acts of service, with thoughtfulness.

“A new commandment I give you,” He said, “that you love one another, even as I have loved you” (John 13:34).

This is a very tall order. How did Our Lord love us? He loved us by dying on the Cross. “Greater love than this no man has, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

Modern culture tends to tell us that love is “feeling.” In the movie, when you hear the violins play, that's when they're in love. Maybe tomorrow morning, there's no more love.

“Feeling” is like a buzzword in modern culture. Taste the feeling, feel the feeling, hear the feeling. Everything is feeling.

But Christ on the Cross did not say, ‘You can't beat this feeling. Live on the right side of life.’ Christ must have been feeling awful on the Cross, with three big nails going through Him.

But it's there that He said, “Greater love than this no man has…” Christ teaches us that love is sacrifice.

If you want to know who you love in this world, ask yourself, For whom am I willing to sacrifice myself?

And if you ask the question, Who loves me most in this world? you could ask, Who has sacrificed themselves most for me in this world?

For most of us, that's our mothers. I often tell secondary school kids to go home and ask their mother, What was my pregnancy like? Those nine months. And what was my labor like? Your mother will tell you to ‘sit down for an hour, I'll tell you about it, contraction by contraction.’

We learn an awful lot from our mothers. John Paul II used to say that we learn from mothers how to love. We learn humanity from mothers.

That's why, he says, every man coming into the world is entrusted to the care of a woman (cf. John Paul II, Encyclical, Evangelium vitae, March 25, 1995). The father has a role to play, of course, but the mother's role is crucial.

That you love one another. “By this, all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

Our Lord could have chosen many other roles, many other virtues that we should be known by: our honesty, our integrity, our chastity, our industriousness, our order.

But He chose charity. St. Paul tells us that “charity is the most perfect of the virtues” (1 Cor. 13:13). Holiness is charity. We'll be judged on our charity.

The one thing that God will ask of us: Did you love other people?

He won't be so impressed by all the great things we may have achieved, or the letters after our name, or the gold medals we've won in all sorts of places.

But He will ask us: How have you loved? How have you learned to love? And to begin again in love?

I heard of a lawyer in Sydney one time who spoke about how a couple came to see him. He was 86 and she was 83.

He said, “What can I do for you?”

And they said, “We want to get a divorce.”

“Why do you want to get a divorce?”

“Because we don't love each other anymore.”

“And how long have you been married?”

“Forty years.”

This lawyer used to attend a yearly retreat where he heard a lot of things about charity, and he tried to remember as best he could the points on charity in that last talk or meditation that he attended.

He gave them an impromptu talk about what charity is. Charity is patient. Charity is kind. It's forgiving. It's overlooking the little irritating details of each day. It's letting the water pass under the bridge. It's not making a mountain out of a molehill. It's loving other people with their defects. It's enduring all things (cf. 1 Cor. 13:4-7).

He asked them to go away and think about these ideas for some time, and then come back another day and they would talk a bit more.

They weren't very convinced, but they said they'd give it a go. They went away.

Three years later the wife came back to tell the lawyer, “Look, I just came back to thank you. Because my husband just passed away, but we've just had three of the most wonderful years of our whole life.”

The moral of the story is that we're always beginning again in love. “God is love” (1 John 4:8,16).

Love is a mystery. We never fully understand the mystery. We never fully grasp it.

But all through our life we can get a different optical angle on that mystery. Come to savor it a little more and come to appreciate the greatness of charity and its importance, so that in our life we try to practise little details of charity in very ordinary ways with the people that we live.

Do they find you thoughtful? Do you have a spirit of service? Are you proactive? Do you remember birthdays or other important days, anniversaries? Do you go out of your way for other people? Are you easy to live with? All these things are important.

“But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27-28).

This is the great Christian revolution. In the Old Testament it was the law of the jungle: “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (cf. Lev. 24:19-20).

But Christ comes to preach the doctrine of love, a love that has to permeate everything—our words, our actions, our work, our sport—in every situation.

Christ is love. The Catholic Church is love. Christianity is love.

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them” (Luke 6:32).

Our Lord invites us to go out of ourselves. Forget about ourselves. Be the first to make amends, to shake hands, to smoothen out situations, to create an atmosphere of charity around us.

Everybody needs affection. There is no human being on this planet that does not have a heart and that does not need affection.

Children need kind words and encouragement. Wives need them. Husbands need them.

We can ask ourselves: In the last two weeks, have I concretely gone out of my way to say a few kind words to somebody?

It could be somebody we bump into in the street, or somebody we pass by in a regular way, but we've never really spoken to them. Everybody has a right to our kind words.

St. Paul says, “Keep encouraging one another” (Heb. 3:13). Everybody needs encouragement.

“And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies and do good and lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:33-35).

We don't give because of what we're going to get. It's not, ‘I give to you as long as you'll give back to me.’ That's selfishness. Charity is opposed to selfishness.

If truth were told, that's our biggest defect. Pride is selfishness, egoism, thinking of myself, concerned about myself.

Christ invites us to forget about ourselves. Be available to others.

All the virtues can always be improving. We also can be growing in charity—learning how to love a little more and a little better in the concrete situations where God has placed us.

Sometimes we might be aware of how we've been hurt by other people, or badly dealt with, or some injustice that's come our way, or somebody has stood on our toes, or said something, or an unpleasant tone, or whatever—within the family, outside the family, in the office, on the golf course, in all sorts of places.

If ever we feel slighted by other people, we have to try and think of how much we may have offended Our God with our sins, and also how much we may have offended other people, at times without realizing it.

A number of years ago in Singapore, there was an elderly group in a parish who were very conscious that half the clergy of the diocese were foreign missionary priests.

This elderly group had the initiative to find out their birthdays and to send them a homemade birthday card. Every year you would get a homemade birthday card from this elders’ group.

One year when I opened the card there was a dedication on the inside which said, “On this day when you remember all the ways in which God has given you blessings, never forget how much you have made other people suffer.”

It was a rather interesting dedication to get on your birthday. But I cut it out and I keep it, and every time I give a talk on charity I come across that quotation.

It's a good thing to remember all the times we may have hurt other people or made them suffer with our words, with our actions.

Ask your mother some time, “Mum, was I ever unlovable?” She'll say, “Sit down for an hour, I'll tell you about it.”

We have all been the most unlovable creatures you could imagine, even though we think of ourselves as the most lovable.

Other people have loved us with our defects. St. Josemaría liked to say that loving other people really is loving them with their defects, not loving them as long as they conform to what I want them to be or what I demand them to be. We are called to love them as they are.

Sometimes, other people's defects become very visible. I was having dinner one evening with a 75-year-old French missionary priest in the highlands of Malaysia. He'd been a number of years, I think, in China. He was retired back there.

There were just the two of us, and halfway through the meal he took out his false teeth and he put them on the table.

My father was a dentist; I was used to seeing false teeth. But this was the first time I ever had a real live set of false teeth looking at me across the table.

He said you know, “This chili that we eat here makes my teeth very loose, so they get uncomfortable.” He explained why he took out his teeth in that way.

Then he told me a story of how the previous week he'd gone back to a town where he had been a parish priest for a number of years.

He said, “I don't like going to fancy restaurants anymore. But there was this man there who was very kind to me, and he invited me to lunch. I couldn't say no, so I went to this fancy restaurant. Again, I had trouble with my teeth. So I took out my teeth.”

He said, “But this time I was a bit more discreet. I wrapped them in the napkin. Then I was chatting away to the people who were there. When I looked back, the napkin was gone. The waitress had taken the napkin. I had to rush to the kitchen. I looked in the garbage can, but I got back my dentures okay.”

He had quite a lot of adventures with that particular article.

Sometimes other people's defects become very visible, and Our Lord invites us to love people with their defects. We will see them sooner or later.

When couples came to see him, he would ask the husband: “Do you love your wife?” He would say yes. “And do you love her with her defects?” And there would be silence.

He’d say, “If you don't love her with her defects, then you don't really love her.”

Then he'd hear, “Well, okay I love her with her defects.”

Then the same thing to the wife: “Do you love your husband?” Yes. “Do you love him with his defects?” Silence.

“If you don't love him with his defects, then you don't really love him.”

To be able to love people with their defects, we need the grace of God to bring us up onto a supernatural level, to see the blood of Christ flowing through the veins of other people, or to see that this person is worth all the blood of Christ.

Christ died on the Cross for this particular person. Now this person that I might find so difficult to love is possibly very precious in the eyes of God. Supernatural grace can help us to look at other people in a different way.

A lady told me once how she was at a Mass and there was a French missionary priest saying the Mass, and he gave a homily.

He spoke about when he was a 10-year-old kid, there was a monastery of strict observance on the outskirts of his village. He used to go there to help the monks in their work.

They had this vow of silence and so they didn't talk. But if you talked, out of charity they would talk to you.

And he said, “I was quite talkative, so they used to talk to me quite a bit as I helped them in their work.”

“But,” he said, “over in the edge of the garden there was an elderly monk. He was always very silent. There was a great aura of holiness about this holy man. I was mesmerized by him. One day, I went over to him and said, ‘When I grow old I want to be like you.’”

The monk said, “No, don't be like me, because I have that hatred in my heart.”

This elderly missionary priest said, “I was shocked to hear that this holy, saintly, elderly monk could have had hatred in his heart.”

He explained, “There's a monk that sits beside me in the refectory who makes a lot of noise when he's eating, and for the past thirty years he's been driving me up the wall.”

The lady who told me the story said, “When the priest said that, I couldn't look at my husband, because for the last thirty years I've been telling him, ‘Mind your manners.’”

All of us can have hatred in our heart. Our Lord has warned us that “out of the human heart” come all sorts of ugly things: hatred, violence, envy, jealousy (cf. Matt. 15:19; Mark 7:21-23).

We shouldn't be surprised or scandalized by the things that can come out of our heart. It's not that we're getting worse.

Those things have always been there. But just maybe, Our Lord lets us see them a little clearer.

Divine love is sacrificial love. Love does not mean to have and to own, but to be possessed by others.

“At the end of your earthly life,” said St. John of the Cross, “you will be judged on the greatness of your love.”

St. Ignatius said, “No wood is better able to increase the fire of divine love than the wood of the cross.”

If we are to love others with their defects, that often means have to be understanding. Very often the greatest charity is understanding—understanding where people are coming from.

Often we don't know where people are coming from. We don't know what's just happened in their life today or in the last hour. We can be full of judgments and criticisms.

Our Lord invites us to be patient, to be understanding.

There was a story of a lady professor on the New York subway. It was a Sunday morning; she was reading her New York Times. She was thinking to herself, ‘What a pleasant place the New York subway is on a Sunday morning. No rush hour traffic.’

At the next station, a lady got on with five children. The lady sat in front of her, closed her eyes, and the children began to run around the carriage.

They were shouting and roaring and screaming. They banged against this lady's newspaper and banged against her in other ways.

She put up with it for as long as she could. But then she decided she'd had enough. She put down her newspaper.

She tapped the woman on the knee, who opened her eyes. In a very irritated tone, she said to the lady, “Don't you think you should do something about your children?”

The lady opened her eyes and said, “Well, perhaps I should, but I've just come from the hospital where their father died, and I'm a bit confused.”

The lady professor was thrown back on her heels. She had no idea where this woman was coming from, what just happened in her life. Her life had just been changed irrevocably, and that of her children.

There she was crucifying this woman and her children in her mind with no mercy.

We never know where people are coming from. We always have to try and find some excuse.

Charity is patient. “By your patience you will inherit your souls” (Luke 21:19).

Eventually the truth will come out. We'll understand a little more from that situation, why people have reacted in this way or said those words or used that tone, done this particular action.

In those situations, we have an opportunity to love a little more, to love a little better, to learn to know the words, the actions, the gestures that only those who love know are really important.

Sometimes our greatest charity can be to be silent, not to burst forth with words or with rage, but to be silent.

Maybe there needs to be a lot more silence in our life—and not just an exterior silence, but an interior silence. Silence of our imagination, of our judgments, of our criticisms, of our interior words and thoughts.

There is a very powerful phrase that we’re told in the story of the Passion. When Our Lord was confronted by Pilate, we’re told Jesus kept silent (John 18:38; Isa. 53:7). One great example that Christ gives us on the way to the Cross—the example of silence.

Euripides says, “Silence is true wisdom’s best reply.” Let things pass. Keep your cool. Hold your tongue.

This may not be the moment to talk. If there's a storm growing in our heart, we'll say, ‘Jesus, give me peace.’

Only with peace and supernatural vision can we listen to what others are saying to us. Some people can't explain things clearly. Others can't understand clearly.

You have to try and listen not just to their words, but to their feelings. Train yourself to hear what people are trying to say.

A person who doesn't understand another person's silences will not understand their words either.

In this way, we can be sensitive to the needs of all. We never know how heavy a burden may be that another person may be carrying.

One of the goals of our life is to try and make sure that no one ever feels alone. We reach out to people. We're there for them, with a phone call, with a word, with a gesture, with an encouragement.

In that way we create a greater unity around us. Hopefully people are happy to be in our company because they know they will be well-treated. There will be justice there.

“Listen with respect and interest,” said St. Josemaría in the Furrow. “Give due credit to people…but carefully ponder your judgment in the presence of God” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 906).

Silently bring to your prayer things that may have jolted you or bothered you or concerned you.

“How very insistent,” he says in The Forge, “the Apostle St. John was in preaching the new commandment that we should love one another! —I would fall on my knees, without putting on any act—but this is what my heart dictates—and ask you, for the love of God, to love one another, to help one another, to lend one another a hand, to know how to forgive one another. —And so, reject all pride, be compassionate, show charity; help each other with prayer and sincere friendship” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 454).

The evangelist that speaks most about charity is St. John. Nearly all the things we hear about charity in the Gospel is in St. John.

Blessed Álvaro del Portillo talks about how “it was to the care of St. John that Our Lady was entrusted.” What a beautiful observation. From his greater contact with Our Lady, he writes more about love.

We could ask Our Lady that from her gentle presence in the background of our life, that our words and actions might have a greater character of charity about them.

Also, other people, from seeing our words and our actions, hopefully they might discover that sweet and gentle presence of Our Lady in the background of our life.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MVF