Charity is primarily a love for God and a love of friendship, which is the highest kind of love. All true friendship implies that the love exists on both sides. Men are not friends unless each of them possesses and recognizes the love of the other. If we are really the friends of God, we shall recognize His love and find in all that happens to us a proof of His love and friendship, not complaining or wishing that He had acted otherwise, but being fully convinced that He never does anything or permits anything that is not intended for our good. Until we do this, our friendship is an imperfect one.
Friendship also requires that we declare our love to God. He knows if we have declared our love for him and the exact degree in which it is present in our hearts. However, He likes to listen to our assurance of the love we bear Him. Our love is prone to wax cold unless it finds expression in words and it is a pleasure to those who are close friends to share their mutual sentiments of friendship. God does not spare in His written Word to give us the strongest assurances of His undying love to man. Do we in return assure Him of our grateful love to Him, the best and dearest friend we have in Heaven or on earth?
Whatever words we use, they cannot surpass God's messages of love to us. He says, if a woman can forget the son of her womb, He will not forget us (Isaias 49:1). He says He loves us so dearly that He spared not even His own Son, but delivered Him up for us (Romans 8:32), and therefore can refuse us nothing for which we ask. (John 16:23,24)
What have we to say to Him, as a counterpart of loving words like these?
- text from Charity, Meditations for a Month by Father Richard Frederick Clarke, SJ