CHARITY AS LOVE OF NEIGHBOUR
Jesus tells us: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Mk 12:31). Loving oneself refers above all to our heart – graced by God - and includes hatred of evil and sin. In the New Testament, we are asked to love others as we love ourselves. Jesus gave us a “new commandment”: “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 12:34). Fray Luis de Granada comments: If this commandment would be carried out in the world, men would live in paradise.
St. Thomas Aquinas tells us in his Summa Theologiae, II-II that Charity as true friendship with God extends also to all neighbors, including our persecutors (like Jesus, first word from the cross), and enemies, “whom we love out of charity in relation to God, to whom the friendship of charity is chiefly connected.” One is asked to hate sin and love the sinner for God’s sake. It “is impossible to love all neighbors with charity in the same way and the same degree.” There is an order of love of neighbor, a ranking among our loves. In the first place, we love those who are close to us and close to God. St. Thomas admits that “charity regards those who are nearer to us before those who are better.” With our relatives and friend, we love the needy.
A wonderful comment I read in the web page of the Carmelite Order Lectio Divina (December 27, 2017): “The characteristics of Jesus which John most appreciated were the Master’s love and unselfishness. These traits made such an impression on him that his whole subsequent life became dominated by the sentiment of love and brotherly devotion. He talked about love and wrote about love. This “son of thunder” became the “apostle of love”; and at Ephesus, when he - an aged bishop - was no longer able to stand in the pulpit and preach but had to be carried to church in a chair, and when at the close of the service he was asked to say a few words to the believers, for years his only utterance was, “My little children, love one another.”
We Christians consider one another as brother or sister. Life is lived in fraternity/sorority. Fraternal life is “a life shared in love” (VC, 42). “Ecce quam bonum et quam iucundum habitare fratres in unun”- “it is great… for brothers to dwell in unity.” We read of the first disciples: “The hearts and minds of all believers were one.” St. Hilary of Poitiers comments: “So it is fitting for the people of God to be brothers under one Father, to be united under one Spirit, to live in harmony under one roof, to be limbs of one body.
The Lord says: “By this love you have for one another, everyone will know that you are my disciples” (Jn 13:35). One who hates his brother walks in darkness (1 Jn 2:11) and does not know God (1 Jn 4:8). St. John Chrysostom says: “Hating others, we punish our own selves; loving them, we do good to our own selves.”
St. Peter advises: “Maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Pet. 4:8). The Christian community is a community of disciples that listens to the Word of God, meet around the Table of the Lord and proclaims the Kingdom of God to humankind. Moreover, “love delights in the truth (1 Cor 13:6): “In the joy of fraternity, pursue the truth”- “In dulcedine societatis, quaerere veritatem” (St. Albert the Great).
Fray Luis de Granada wrote that we should have three hearts: For God, the heart of sons and daughters; for men and women, the heart of a mother; for ourselves, the heart of a judge. “In practice, our three hearts might be in different places. For God, we might have a heart of a slave; for others, a heart of a judge; and for ourselves, a heart of a big mother” (Martin Dezcalzo).
I have to love the other, not just as I love myself, but as Christ loves the other, as a mother loves her daughter or son. And I have to allow the other to love me. As I was reminded in a lecture I gave to Dominicans in Taiwan: love is not only active but also passive: to love and to be loved. St. Thomas comments: “Nothing moves to love than to feel loved.” Morrie – of the famous book Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom – says: “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in; let it come in.” Pope Benedict XVI: “Man cannot live by oblative, descending love alone. He cannot always give; he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift” (DCE, 5; cf. Pope Francis AL 167).
To love is more important than to be loved. In fact, the act of love is loving. St Thomas tells us: “It is more proper to charity to desire to love than to desire to be loved.” He gives an example: “Mothers, who are those who love most, seek to love more than to be loved” (II-II, 27; cf. Pope Francis, AL, 102). I remember the words of Albert Camus: Not to love is a disgrace; not to be loved is bad luck.
From our perspective, the classical theory of charity appears as more concerned with the individual person – as “another I…” The other for us, moreover, is not only a person, but also a people, an ethnic group, the poor, the refugees, the excluded from the banquet of life. The teaching of St. Thomas on charity has been criticized by some for not stressing enough the social and global dimension of charity and mercy. It is true, perhaps, but we have to add that St. Thomas’ teaching on justice, property and the poor continues to be today truly revolutionary.
To the classical teaching on charity and mercy we have to add the need of justice to live charity. In our time, the Social Doctrine of the Church and social ethics underline also the social dimension of charity and of mercy.
And to conclude. We remember: God is love and we are loving beings, beings in love: “To be is to love”, and
“TO BE A HUMAN BEING IS TO BE A FELLOW HUMAN BEING”
(FGB)