XIII. The Descent of the Holy Ghost - Charity

What is this Spirit Jesus sends that makes the roof of the upper room tremble, and diffuses itself upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost? It is the same which in heaven produces the movement of infinite life and completes the divine family; it is the perfective force, the essential substance of the love of the Father and of the Son; it is charity itself. He comes to bring us charity, as we learn from the Apostle of the Gentiles: "The charity of God is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to us." (Romans 5:5). Faith and hope are great and splendid virtues, but "charity is greater than they."

"Without charity," says Saint Thomas of Aquin, "the highest and most estimable goods are without union or cohesion; charity unites (connectit) them. Without charity all good things are fragile; charity gives them stability. Without charity goods of an inferior order tend, to separation from the supreme good; charity elevates them, transforms them, and makes of all goods one only good. 'Above all things have charity,' says Saint Paul; 'it is the bond of perfection.'" (Colossians 3)

All that in which we make perfection consist only brings us imperfectly and in a manner more or less near to the eternal type.

The possession of earthly goods, the exercise of command, makes us participate in the sovereign dominion of God; intellectual culture in His infinite knowledge, moral virtues in His adorable sanctity. Faith gives us admission into His secrets and leads us on to His beatitude, but charity fixes us in Him and roots us in His love. "God is charity; he who has charity abideth in God, and God in him." (1 John 4) The day will come when the universe will be folded like a book; its goods, its beauties, and its joys will slip from our hands; science will be no more; miracles will cease; the prophecies will find emptiness under their feet; faith will vanish in presence of the eternal revelations; hope, having come to its object, will end in that object; but charity will always remain. "Charity never faileth." (1 Corinthians 13)

Above all things let us have charity. It is the greatest honor, the most perfect beauty, the most imperative yet winning of duties. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first commandment." (Mark 12)

Is it thus we love God? Admitting that we make pretensions to His love, does not the whole tenor of our lives give these pretensions a shameful and cruel contradiction?

The object of true love is often thought of; but we can hardly spare a few moments in our daily occupation to raise our souls to God, the supreme object of all love. Many hours are spent in worldly and sometimes very frivolous engagements in which God is allowed no share. We hear people speak freely and frequently of those whom they love and of themselves, of their perfections and merits; but every conversation in which God or the affairs of God are brought in seems irrelevant or tiresome. We are too much inclined to treat of our own little interests and passions, and to expatiate upon trifles and illusions.

The will of those whom we love is obeyed with alacrity, but we reluctantly apply ourselves to the holy laws by which God's will is expressed, even when we do not put our own caprices or culpable desires above them.

We give ourselves totally to those we love; we are prepared to sacrifice for them our most precious goods, even life itself; but for God we make a very small place indeed in our paltry existence. Knowing our weakness, He refrains from exactions; but, supposing for His glory there was need of our blood or of our life - nay, even less than that, of our earthly affections, of our temporal goods, of our pleasures - would we have the courage to say to Him, Take them?

O my God! if it is true that I love thee, my love is yet a very poor thing. But have pity upon the little germ that Thou hast planted in my heart, and make it grow into that divine charity which Thou expectest of me, and with which the apostles were filled on the day of Pentecost. May the Holy Virgin, who embalmed the room in which they were assembled with the sweet perfume of Her virtues, and who, by the fervor of Her desires, brought down upon Her the Spirit of God, deign to obtain this grace for us.

- text taken from Fruits of the Rosary, by Father Jacques-Marie Louis Monsabre, O.P.