Charity: The Greatest of the Theological Virtues

We use the word love for almost everything: we love a sports team, a plate of food, a movie. But there is a love that is neither a passing taste nor a fleeting emotion — it is the greatest of the virtues, the one that Saint Paul dares to place even above faith and hope. The Church calls it charity. And it is not merely giving alms or being kind: it is to love God above all things and, for love of Him, to love every person who crosses our path. It is, according to Scripture, the only virtue that will never pass away.

Charity, in the vocabulary of faith, translates the Latin word caritas and the Greek agápe: the love that comes from God and makes us able to love as He loves. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 1822) defines it as the virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God. Notice that these are two movements of a single love: rising up to God and, descending from Him, reaching our brother. One cannot live without the other.

But why is it the greatest of the three theological virtues? Because faith and hope are for this life: we believe in what we do not yet see, and we hope for what we do not yet have. When at last we behold God face to face in Heaven, we will no longer need to believe or to hope — only to love will remain. That is why Saint Paul writes that three things abide, faith, hope, and charity, but the greatest of these is charity. It is the only one that passes through death and enters whole into eternity.

The tradition of the Church calls charity the “form of the virtues”: it is charity that gives life and direction to all the rest. A faith without charity would be barren; courage without love would be no more than hardness. Saint Augustine summed it all up in one bold phrase — “Love, and do what you will” — not as a license for selfishness, but because whoever truly loves no longer desires anything but the good. And this charity is not born of our effort alone: it is a gift of God, poured into us by the Holy Spirit, that grows with prayer and the sacraments. Those who wish to go deeper will find a beautiful guide in the encyclical Deus Caritas Est, by Benedict XVI, devoted entirely to Christian love.

We must, however, clear up a misunderstanding: charity is not a feeling. I may feel no liking at all for a person and still love them with charity — willing their good, praying for them, treating them with justice and respect. Christian love is proved less in what we feel and more in what we do. That is why the Catholic faith speaks of the works of mercy: to feed the hungry, to visit the sick, to forgive those who have wronged us, to comfort the afflicted. These are small gestures, within anyone’s reach, and it is in them that charity takes on hands and feet.

We are in Ordinary Time, that season without great feasts in which the Church asks us to live the Gospel in the midst of everyday life — and there is no virtue more everyday than charity. It is worth remembering that just a few weeks ago we celebrated Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit pours the love of God into our hearts, and Corpus Christi, the feast of the Eucharist, which is the very sacrament of charity. To meditate today on love is, in the end, to gather the fruits of those feasts and let them ripen in our concrete lives.

So how can we love a little more today? Start small and concrete. Choose a difficult person in your life — that relative, that coworker — and, instead of waiting to feel something for them, make a gesture of goodness: a message, a quiet act of forgiveness, a prayer for them by name. Draw near to the sacraments, especially Confession and the Eucharist, for it is from there that charity springs and is renewed when it grows cold. And ask God — truly ask Him — for the gift of loving, because charity is grace before it is effort. May we end this day having loved a little more than yesterday: it is in this way, in silence and without fanfare, that Heaven already begins here.

Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Mt 22:37-39 (Douay-Rheims)