"If I have not charity I am nothing."
These are the words of Holy Scripture inspired by God Himself. Unless we are united to God by the habit of supernatural charity, unless we love Him before all else for His own sake with a supreme and unselfish love, we are not children of God but aliens. Unless we do these things, we have no inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven, we can earn no merit before God, and all that we do has no beauty in His sight. All our actions, however noble and generous, do not really please Him, or deserve grace in this life or glory in the next.
Moreover, unless there is at least an initial element of charity in our actions, they will not help us in any way on the road to Heaven. Acts of faith and hope, though they may be performed by one who has not perfect charity, contain an unformed and rudimentary element of charity. They are the germ or bud from which charity may afterwards spring and, in this way, they lead to charity. In themselves, faith and hope gain no merit unless they are the actions of one who already has charity in his heart.
Even if we have the habit of charity and are in a state of grace, our actions are not meritorious before God unless they are done from a motive of charity. Charity must in some way influence faith and hope, if not with a present thought of God, yet with the golden light of our love to Him lighting them up. Without this they may count for nothing, or at most merit only a natural reward. If I give money purely out of natural compassion and pity, I gain a temporal, but not an eternal reward. How careful I must be to offer to God each act of charity to men!
- text from Charity, Meditations for a Month by Father Richard Frederick Clarke, SJ