Love God; loves others! The two great Commandments. They take in the whole of the Ten Commandments. The first three being towards God, with the other seven towards others. When I was a fledgling in the Faith, an older friend told me that being lukewarm is 'not so hot'. I've always remembered this, and hopefully will keep on remembering it.
Now, I, as usual, will let the good Abbot instruct us as to being charitable to others.
'Let us Christians, out of contempt for satan, who stirred up the expiring Synagogue thus to lay snares for the Son of God, turn these efforts of hatred into an instruction which will warm up our love. The Jews, by rejecting Christ Jesus, sinned against both of the commandments which constitute charity, and embody the whole law; and we, on the contrary, by loving that same Jesus, fulfill the whole law.
Jesus is the brightness of eternal glory, one, by nature, with the Father and the Holy Ghost; He is the God whom the first commandment bids us love, and it is in Him also that the second has its truest and adequate application. For not only is He as truly Man as He is truly God, but He is the Man par excellence, the perfect Man, on whose type, and for whom, all other men were formed; He is the model and the brother of all of them; He is at the same time the leader who governs them as their King, and offers them to God as their High Priest; He is the Head who communicates to all the members of the human family beauty, and life, and movement, and light; He is the Redeemer of the human family since it has fallen, and on that account He is twice over the source of all right, and the ultimate and highest motive, even when not the direct object, of every love that deserves to be called love here below. Nothing counts with God, excepting so far as it has reference to Jesus. As St. Augustine says, God loves men only inasmuch as they either are, or may one day become, members of His Son; it is His Son that He loves in them; thus He loves, with one same love though not equally, His Word, and the Flesh of His Word, and the members of His Incarnate Word. Now, charity is love--love such as it is in God, communicated to us creatures by the Holy Ghost. Therefore, what we should love, by charity, both in ourselves, and in others, is the divine Word, either as being, or, according to another expression of the same St. Augustine, 'that He may be,' in others and in ourselves.
Let us take care, also, as a consequence of this same truth, not to exclude any human being from our love, excepting the damned, who are absolutely and eternally cut off from the body of the Man-God. Who can boast that he has the charity of Christ if he do not embrace His unity? The questing is St. Augustine again. Who can love Christ, without loving, with Him, the Church, which is His body? without loving all His members? What we do--be it to the least, or be it to the worthiest, be it of evil, or of good--it is to Him we do it, for He tells us so. Then, let us love our neighbor as ourselves, because of Christ, who is in each of us, and who gives to us all union and increase in charity.'
After all this, I'm going to make a comment. We hear all of the time about faith, hope, and love. In Corinthians, it is faith, hope, and charity. Now, I think love and charity are related, but I don't think they are the same thing at all. We can love our neighbor because God tells us to. However, I don't think it is true love unless we give of ourselves to them because of charity, whether it be doing something for them without expecting something in return, or just being there for them in times of need. We try to be good examples for them, hopefully helping them come to the true Faith before they die.
Lord, have mercy on us
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