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Meditation 33. Love for Neighbor
Preparatory Prayer as on page x
Composition of Place — Imagine you see Jesus Christ in the company of His Apostles and disciples and saying to them: "Love one another as I have loved you . . . By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love one for another." (John 13:34,35). "As long as you did it to one of these . . . brethren, you did it to Me." (Mt. 25:40).
Prayer of Petition — Grant me, Lord, that spirit of charity whereby I would love my neighbor as myself — more than myself — that I may love him as Thou loved him, even to the extent of Thou giving Thy life for him.
First Point
You should know, my soul, that God is Love itself; God is Charity. This virtue is the greatest of virtues. It is greater than faith and hope. It is like the sun among the stars, like gold among the metals. It gives life to all the virtues. Without it no act has value for reaching Heaven — no, not even the most heroic works.
This Love, or Charity, is like the center from which rays emerge. It is like a vertex from which two lines originate, one of which leads to God and the other to one's neighbor. These two lines and these two Commandments contain whatever the Prophets and the Law have said.
If one truly loves God, that is proof that there is love for neighbor, and the love one has for his neighbor discloses the love one has for God. He who says he loves God and does not love his neighbor, does not tell the truth, because it is impossible to love one whom we do not see, who is God, if we do not love one whom we see, namely, our brother.
Concerning this love, or charity, for your neighbor, my soul, you need to consider unhurriedly three things:
(1) What this charity is — Charity is an all-extensive virtue which embraces everyone; fellow-countrymen and foreigners, friends and enemies. It extends to everyone, embraces all, and does good to all. Therefore people who limit their love to those of their own area or those of their own nation, to those of their own sentiments, or to their friends or relatives, and are not careful to love the rest of men — such people do not have true charity.
(2) What the quality of this virtue is — The Apostle explains charity thus: "Charity is patient, is kind." (1 Cor. 13:4). It rejoices in another's good fortune as though it were one's own. It is resentful toward no one and speaks ill of no one. It does good to all and has sympathy for everyone. As much as is possible, it remedies the needs of all. It achieves and promotes what is good, and with all its power it hinders evil. In a word, charity encourages and cheerfully practices all the works of mercy — corporal and spiritual.
(3) By what spirit are you animated when you love your neighbor? — This is something you ought to examine, inquiring whether it is the love for God that moves you, or whether it is rather self-love. Perhaps you will find that you do not really love your neighbor. Maybe you will discover envy instead of charity, spite in place of love. See whether you grieve at your neighbor's good fortune and are gladdened when he suffers ruin and trouble. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks," says Jesus Christ.
Thus if your heart is full of love and charity for your neighbor, you will speak well of him; but if it has been emptied of charity and harbors some evil feeling of envy, spite or ill-will, you will be quick to speak ill of him; and sometimes you will grumble against him, another time criticize, another time ridicule, or exaggerate his faults, or you will downgrade his merits when you do not entirely deny them, or you might attribute them to a bad intention.
The person who is envious or uncharitable is like a spider which draws poison from the same flowers from which bees draw honey. Envious persons who are destitute of charity are like those large flying insects that are ever hunting for someone's sores, and when they come across one, they linger on it with pleasure to suck out the pus.
Thus envious, uncharitable people are recognized by the way they pry about their neighbor's faults and murmur about his failings. Such unhappy persons take pleasure and delight in going over such sordid affairs. You see, my soul, that you must have charity, and thus you will imitate the bee. Fashion a rich honeycomb which will be a great profit to you, an edification to your neighbor, and will serve God's greater glory.
Affective Acts
(1) Resolution — My God, I give Thee my word that I will do all the good I can for my neighbor by offering alms, good counsel, prayers, and good example. And besides, I will meekly and humbly put up with his frailties, his peculiar traits and everything that can annoy me, and never will I grumble about offenses he may do to me. I will forgive him and pray for him, in imitation of Jesus Christ, Thy Son and My Sovereign Master, Whom I want to follow and imitate.
(2) Prayer of Petition — My Jesus, grant me grace that will enable me to practise the virtues that Thou hast vouchsafed to teach me by word and example, and in particular meekness and charity, which Thou hast so strongly recommended to us.
Second Point
The virtue of charity or love that we must have for our neighbor is something very noble and holy — so much so that it deserves to be practised for what it is in itself. But there are some other very powerful motives for it which neither pride nor self-love can resist. How deeply people would be moved if they would reflect upon them!
The trouble is that people do not reflect on them, and therefore we see the world in wretched condition, without charity or love for neighbor, since there is no one who ponders the powerful motives for practising this virtue. We will proceed, then, to meditate on them. They are the following:
(1) Charity is commanded by God — and this is itself an adequate motive — You ought to know, my soul, that after loving God above all things we must love our neighbor as ourselves, even if he be our enemy. Maybe self-love or pride will object, but the ready answer is: God commands it; and if an enemy does not deserve to be loved, God does deserve to be obeyed, and for love of God and out of the obedience we owe Him, we must love our enemies.
(2) The second motive is human nature itself — There is a principle which says: Every living thing loves its own kind. To love is to desire and strive for someone's good. Hence we must strive for the good of one another. We all form one moral and social body, since man by nature is social. Thus, as members of the same body we ought to strive for the good of one another, just as we see is done by members of a physical body.
(3) Being Christians, we are taught by religion that we are all brothers — that we all have a common Father, Who is God, and a common Mother, Who is Blessed Mary, and that the greatest pleasure we can give Them is to love one another like good brothers. We have a common Redeemer and Advocate, Who is Jesus Christ. We are all created for the same end, which is Heaven. We all have the same commandments to keep and the same Sacraments to receive and the same truths that we must believe. We must put our hopes in the same promises and fear the same punishments.
(4) We are disciples of Jesus Christ — Who, by word and example, taught us this very important truth, and has done so with such earnestness and insistence that He went so far as to say that we know whether we are His disciples by whether we love one another as He has loved us; and He adds that whatever we do to our neighbor, He takes it as something done to Himself.
To emphasize the importance of charity, He reveals to us a wonderful truth. He told us that when He shall come to judge us at the end of the world, He will glorify and reward those who have loved and served their neighbor as if they had done this to Him. But as for those who have not loved and helped their neighbor, He will disgrace them and publicly take them to task as though they had refused this love and help to Himself, and finally He will condemn them to eternal fire.
(5) The motive of good order — Even if this love had not been commanded by the Lord, one ought to love one's neighbor because of a need for it. Take a good look, my soul, at what happens in a home or town where there is no love of neighbor or fraternal charity, or where people do not love one another as brothers.
Oh, dear God! What disorder! What confusion! It seems more like a hell than a home or community . . . God withdraws His graces and blessings from it and leaves the people to themselves, and they become playthings of their passions; they do nothing good and are apt to do much evil — turning to rash judgments, suspicions, hatred, grumbling, fights, scandals, and many other great evils.
That is why Saint John says that one who does not love his neighbor as he ought, is dead. God is so fond of this love or charity that He is named Charity, and where charity is, God is, and there is peace and happiness. But where there is no charity, there is no peace nor tranquillity, laws are not kept, Commandments are not observed, obligations are not fulfilled, virtue is not practised, temporal goods are wasted, diseases afflict people, death is hastened, and the soul goes to hell after having suffered greatly in this world.
Affective Acts
(1) Resolution — I know that charity is such a necessary virtue that without it there can be no society. I am quite convinced that I have the strongest reasons to practise this virtue. Therefore, with God's help, I will practise it as much as I can.
(2) Prayer of Petition — Grant me grace, my Jesus, to be charitable to my neighbor, to help him as much as I can. May I never make him suffer from my disorderly or proud ways. May I always speak to him with friendliness and sweetness and never with unpleasant, rude or disparaging words. May I be sympathetic towards his pains and troubles and remedy them as much as I can.
Third Point
Consider, my soul, the means that you must take to suitably practise this virtue of charity or love for your neighbor.
(1) Do not of set purpose dwell on his faults and defects — On the contrary, consider the good with which God has favored him. If you do not see something in him that can move you to highly respect him, consider that he is an image of God, redeemed by the Blood of Jesus Christ and made for Heaven.
Consider that perhaps in Heaven he will have more glory than you, and that even if today he may be evil, perhaps he will become converted, will do penance, will become fervent, and will gain more merit than you will — as happened with Saint Paul, with Saint Mary Magdalene, with the Samaritan woman, and others.
(2) One must distinguish the sin from the sinner — Sin should be abhorred, but the sinner should be loved. When you see someone who has committed a crime, reflect that if you had been placed in the temptation he was in, you might have committed the same sin as he, and that if he were in your position, assisted by the grace with which God assists you, he might be better than you are.
Therefore do not murmur about your neighbor. Fear God. Reflect that the weakness one person has, another can have, and that you will fall into the sin into which your neighbor has fallen if God does not help you in a special way. Moreover, not seldom does it happen that God permits us or our immediate kinsmen to fall into the same fault which we censure in others. Thus we should treat others as we would want to be treated if we had fallen into those faults.
(3) To preserve charity we must also fulfill the obligations called for by our state in life, our office, and our power to do good — It is not seldom that displeasure, quarrels, and abusive remarks come about from failure to meet obligations. In this way we trouble our parents and superiors, our equals complain, and people under us murmur and grumble when we do not fulfill the duties that pertain to us.
(4) We must also respect the interests of other people — One must not take nor desire what belongs to another. A man is more sensitive about the way he is treated as to his pocketbook, than about his blood. It not seldom happens that ties of close kinship are ruptured by a little property dispute. The same should be said about ties of friendship. Oh, how many friendships have been broken by petty property and money matters!
How many associations began in the name of God, and due to a sordid concern over temporalities, ended in the name of the devil, who engineered a thousand lawsuits wherein charity was abandoned, peace was forfeited, and even the wealth of the persons concerned was lost.
Therefore Jesus Christ tells us in His holy Gospel not to put up resistance to the injury. If someone wants to sue us and take our tunic, we are to let him take our cloak as well. If someone strikes us on our right cheek, we are to turn to him the other. Let all be lost rather than charity . . . Let us leave everything in God's hands, Who is well able to give us more than we give up and is just in seeing that our honor is restored. Let us not desire revenge. On the contrary, all who do us harm we should commend to God in imitation of Jesus.
(5) To preserve charity, not only must we respect other people's temporal interests and their persons, but also their honor — treating everyone with politeness and thoughtfulness, not offending anyone by rudeness, inappropriate speech, nicknames, and ridicule; for such behavior is not only against charity, but discloses a spirit that is cheap, ill-bred, and unworthy of human society.
Affective Acts
(1) Prayer of Petition — Grant me, my God, that patient charity which nothing changes, that accommodating charity that does good to all, that universal charity that makes no one an exception to it.
(2) Resolution — I will never be angry with my neighbors. If I might sometimes feel anger, I will be silent until the trouble passes. I will never speak ill of anyone. I will not listen to those who speak ill of their neighbor. I will do what good I can to all, with the help of our Lord and the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Now pray the Our Father and the Hail Mary and the Concluding Prayers as on page xi.
Preparatory Prayer as on page x
Composition of Place — Imagine you see Jesus Christ in the company of His Apostles and disciples and saying to them: "Love one another as I have loved you . . . By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love one for another." (John 13:34,35). "As long as you did it to one of these . . . brethren, you did it to Me." (Mt. 25:40).
Prayer of Petition — Grant me, Lord, that spirit of charity whereby I would love my neighbor as myself — more than myself — that I may love him as Thou loved him, even to the extent of Thou giving Thy life for him.
First Point
You should know, my soul, that God is Love itself; God is Charity. This virtue is the greatest of virtues. It is greater than faith and hope. It is like the sun among the stars, like gold among the metals. It gives life to all the virtues. Without it no act has value for reaching Heaven — no, not even the most heroic works.
This Love, or Charity, is like the center from which rays emerge. It is like a vertex from which two lines originate, one of which leads to God and the other to one's neighbor. These two lines and these two Commandments contain whatever the Prophets and the Law have said.
If one truly loves God, that is proof that there is love for neighbor, and the love one has for his neighbor discloses the love one has for God. He who says he loves God and does not love his neighbor, does not tell the truth, because it is impossible to love one whom we do not see, who is God, if we do not love one whom we see, namely, our brother.
Concerning this love, or charity, for your neighbor, my soul, you need to consider unhurriedly three things:
(1) What this charity is — Charity is an all-extensive virtue which embraces everyone; fellow-countrymen and foreigners, friends and enemies. It extends to everyone, embraces all, and does good to all. Therefore people who limit their love to those of their own area or those of their own nation, to those of their own sentiments, or to their friends or relatives, and are not careful to love the rest of men — such people do not have true charity.
(2) What the quality of this virtue is — The Apostle explains charity thus: "Charity is patient, is kind." (1 Cor. 13:4). It rejoices in another's good fortune as though it were one's own. It is resentful toward no one and speaks ill of no one. It does good to all and has sympathy for everyone. As much as is possible, it remedies the needs of all. It achieves and promotes what is good, and with all its power it hinders evil. In a word, charity encourages and cheerfully practices all the works of mercy — corporal and spiritual.
(3) By what spirit are you animated when you love your neighbor? — This is something you ought to examine, inquiring whether it is the love for God that moves you, or whether it is rather self-love. Perhaps you will find that you do not really love your neighbor. Maybe you will discover envy instead of charity, spite in place of love. See whether you grieve at your neighbor's good fortune and are gladdened when he suffers ruin and trouble. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks," says Jesus Christ.
Thus if your heart is full of love and charity for your neighbor, you will speak well of him; but if it has been emptied of charity and harbors some evil feeling of envy, spite or ill-will, you will be quick to speak ill of him; and sometimes you will grumble against him, another time criticize, another time ridicule, or exaggerate his faults, or you will downgrade his merits when you do not entirely deny them, or you might attribute them to a bad intention.
The person who is envious or uncharitable is like a spider which draws poison from the same flowers from which bees draw honey. Envious persons who are destitute of charity are like those large flying insects that are ever hunting for someone's sores, and when they come across one, they linger on it with pleasure to suck out the pus.
Thus envious, uncharitable people are recognized by the way they pry about their neighbor's faults and murmur about his failings. Such unhappy persons take pleasure and delight in going over such sordid affairs. You see, my soul, that you must have charity, and thus you will imitate the bee. Fashion a rich honeycomb which will be a great profit to you, an edification to your neighbor, and will serve God's greater glory.
Affective Acts
(1) Resolution — My God, I give Thee my word that I will do all the good I can for my neighbor by offering alms, good counsel, prayers, and good example. And besides, I will meekly and humbly put up with his frailties, his peculiar traits and everything that can annoy me, and never will I grumble about offenses he may do to me. I will forgive him and pray for him, in imitation of Jesus Christ, Thy Son and My Sovereign Master, Whom I want to follow and imitate.
(2) Prayer of Petition — My Jesus, grant me grace that will enable me to practise the virtues that Thou hast vouchsafed to teach me by word and example, and in particular meekness and charity, which Thou hast so strongly recommended to us.
Second Point
The virtue of charity or love that we must have for our neighbor is something very noble and holy — so much so that it deserves to be practised for what it is in itself. But there are some other very powerful motives for it which neither pride nor self-love can resist. How deeply people would be moved if they would reflect upon them!
The trouble is that people do not reflect on them, and therefore we see the world in wretched condition, without charity or love for neighbor, since there is no one who ponders the powerful motives for practising this virtue. We will proceed, then, to meditate on them. They are the following:
(1) Charity is commanded by God — and this is itself an adequate motive — You ought to know, my soul, that after loving God above all things we must love our neighbor as ourselves, even if he be our enemy. Maybe self-love or pride will object, but the ready answer is: God commands it; and if an enemy does not deserve to be loved, God does deserve to be obeyed, and for love of God and out of the obedience we owe Him, we must love our enemies.
(2) The second motive is human nature itself — There is a principle which says: Every living thing loves its own kind. To love is to desire and strive for someone's good. Hence we must strive for the good of one another. We all form one moral and social body, since man by nature is social. Thus, as members of the same body we ought to strive for the good of one another, just as we see is done by members of a physical body.
(3) Being Christians, we are taught by religion that we are all brothers — that we all have a common Father, Who is God, and a common Mother, Who is Blessed Mary, and that the greatest pleasure we can give Them is to love one another like good brothers. We have a common Redeemer and Advocate, Who is Jesus Christ. We are all created for the same end, which is Heaven. We all have the same commandments to keep and the same Sacraments to receive and the same truths that we must believe. We must put our hopes in the same promises and fear the same punishments.
(4) We are disciples of Jesus Christ — Who, by word and example, taught us this very important truth, and has done so with such earnestness and insistence that He went so far as to say that we know whether we are His disciples by whether we love one another as He has loved us; and He adds that whatever we do to our neighbor, He takes it as something done to Himself.
To emphasize the importance of charity, He reveals to us a wonderful truth. He told us that when He shall come to judge us at the end of the world, He will glorify and reward those who have loved and served their neighbor as if they had done this to Him. But as for those who have not loved and helped their neighbor, He will disgrace them and publicly take them to task as though they had refused this love and help to Himself, and finally He will condemn them to eternal fire.
(5) The motive of good order — Even if this love had not been commanded by the Lord, one ought to love one's neighbor because of a need for it. Take a good look, my soul, at what happens in a home or town where there is no love of neighbor or fraternal charity, or where people do not love one another as brothers.
Oh, dear God! What disorder! What confusion! It seems more like a hell than a home or community . . . God withdraws His graces and blessings from it and leaves the people to themselves, and they become playthings of their passions; they do nothing good and are apt to do much evil — turning to rash judgments, suspicions, hatred, grumbling, fights, scandals, and many other great evils.
That is why Saint John says that one who does not love his neighbor as he ought, is dead. God is so fond of this love or charity that He is named Charity, and where charity is, God is, and there is peace and happiness. But where there is no charity, there is no peace nor tranquillity, laws are not kept, Commandments are not observed, obligations are not fulfilled, virtue is not practised, temporal goods are wasted, diseases afflict people, death is hastened, and the soul goes to hell after having suffered greatly in this world.
Affective Acts
(1) Resolution — I know that charity is such a necessary virtue that without it there can be no society. I am quite convinced that I have the strongest reasons to practise this virtue. Therefore, with God's help, I will practise it as much as I can.
(2) Prayer of Petition — Grant me grace, my Jesus, to be charitable to my neighbor, to help him as much as I can. May I never make him suffer from my disorderly or proud ways. May I always speak to him with friendliness and sweetness and never with unpleasant, rude or disparaging words. May I be sympathetic towards his pains and troubles and remedy them as much as I can.
Third Point
Consider, my soul, the means that you must take to suitably practise this virtue of charity or love for your neighbor.
(1) Do not of set purpose dwell on his faults and defects — On the contrary, consider the good with which God has favored him. If you do not see something in him that can move you to highly respect him, consider that he is an image of God, redeemed by the Blood of Jesus Christ and made for Heaven.
Consider that perhaps in Heaven he will have more glory than you, and that even if today he may be evil, perhaps he will become converted, will do penance, will become fervent, and will gain more merit than you will — as happened with Saint Paul, with Saint Mary Magdalene, with the Samaritan woman, and others.
(2) One must distinguish the sin from the sinner — Sin should be abhorred, but the sinner should be loved. When you see someone who has committed a crime, reflect that if you had been placed in the temptation he was in, you might have committed the same sin as he, and that if he were in your position, assisted by the grace with which God assists you, he might be better than you are.
Therefore do not murmur about your neighbor. Fear God. Reflect that the weakness one person has, another can have, and that you will fall into the sin into which your neighbor has fallen if God does not help you in a special way. Moreover, not seldom does it happen that God permits us or our immediate kinsmen to fall into the same fault which we censure in others. Thus we should treat others as we would want to be treated if we had fallen into those faults.
(3) To preserve charity we must also fulfill the obligations called for by our state in life, our office, and our power to do good — It is not seldom that displeasure, quarrels, and abusive remarks come about from failure to meet obligations. In this way we trouble our parents and superiors, our equals complain, and people under us murmur and grumble when we do not fulfill the duties that pertain to us.
(4) We must also respect the interests of other people — One must not take nor desire what belongs to another. A man is more sensitive about the way he is treated as to his pocketbook, than about his blood. It not seldom happens that ties of close kinship are ruptured by a little property dispute. The same should be said about ties of friendship. Oh, how many friendships have been broken by petty property and money matters!
How many associations began in the name of God, and due to a sordid concern over temporalities, ended in the name of the devil, who engineered a thousand lawsuits wherein charity was abandoned, peace was forfeited, and even the wealth of the persons concerned was lost.
Therefore Jesus Christ tells us in His holy Gospel not to put up resistance to the injury. If someone wants to sue us and take our tunic, we are to let him take our cloak as well. If someone strikes us on our right cheek, we are to turn to him the other. Let all be lost rather than charity . . . Let us leave everything in God's hands, Who is well able to give us more than we give up and is just in seeing that our honor is restored. Let us not desire revenge. On the contrary, all who do us harm we should commend to God in imitation of Jesus.
(5) To preserve charity, not only must we respect other people's temporal interests and their persons, but also their honor — treating everyone with politeness and thoughtfulness, not offending anyone by rudeness, inappropriate speech, nicknames, and ridicule; for such behavior is not only against charity, but discloses a spirit that is cheap, ill-bred, and unworthy of human society.
Affective Acts
(1) Prayer of Petition — Grant me, my God, that patient charity which nothing changes, that accommodating charity that does good to all, that universal charity that makes no one an exception to it.
(2) Resolution — I will never be angry with my neighbors. If I might sometimes feel anger, I will be silent until the trouble passes. I will never speak ill of anyone. I will not listen to those who speak ill of their neighbor. I will do what good I can to all, with the help of our Lord and the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Now pray the Our Father and the Hail Mary and the Concluding Prayers as on page xi.
"So let us be confident, let us not be unprepared, let us not be outflanked, let us be wise, vigilant, fighting against those who are trying to tear the faith out of our souls and morality out of our hearts, so that we may remain Catholics, remain united to the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain united to the Roman Catholic Church, remain faithful children of the Church."- Abp. Lefebvre