De arte praedicatoria

These authorities set forth the pattern of charity: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul.¹ John says: God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.² Likewise Peter: Above all things, having mutual charity among yourselves, for charity covers a multitude of sins.³

Likewise Paul: Charity is patient, is kind, etc.⁴ Likewise Augustine says: "Whatever we do without charity profits us nothing, and we spend empty effort if we do not have charity, which is God." Likewise Gregory says: "The rust of sins is consumed all the more, the more the sinner's heart is burned by the fire of charity." From these, one should proceed thus:

Who, endowed with Ciceronian eloquence, who formed in all wisdom, suffices to express the praises of charity and set forth its virtues? This is the charity that teaches us to flee enticements, to trample pleasures, to restrain the concupiscence of the flesh, to despise honors, to break unlawful desires; and finally, to spurn all the blandishments of the present life. Concerning this the Bridegroom admonishes in the Song of Songs, saying: Set me as a seal upon your heart, set me as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is hard as hell.⁵

For death extinguishes the living, but hell spares not even the dead. Love, then, is like death, for as death punishes the sense of the flesh, so love punishes the inclination of carnal concupiscence. Jealousy is hard as hell, because those whom the desire for eternal things draws within, it compels not only to spurn outward blandishments, but even to endure adversities and hardships for the sake of obtaining what they love.

Charity strengthens the other virtues by the protection of its own perfection. Whoever grafts himself into its root neither lacks greenness nor loses fruit, for it does not lose its effective work. Isidore also says of this: No reward is granted without the love of charity; however rightly one believes, without charity one cannot arrive at blessedness. For such is the power of charity that even prophecy and martyrdom without it profit nothing.

Charity holds first place among all the virtues. Hence it is called by the Apostle the bond of perfection,⁶ for all the virtues are bound together by its bond. Love God, then, that you may be loved by him; and by being with him you will more quickly reach him, for by love you will grasp, possess, and enjoy him. This is the surpassing way, the eminent way, straightening the crooked paths, showing the right paths.

This is the charity that so prevailed over God that it brought him down from the seat of supernal majesty to the depths of our mortality; it wounded the impassible, drew the unchangeable, bound the unconquerable, made the eternal mortal.

If charity could do so much toward God, how much, o man, ought it to be able to do in yourself? If God endured so much for man's sake, what will man refuse to bear for God's sake? Let man be ashamed not to submit to charity, which subjected to itself the author of the world! This charity is not jealous, does not act perversely, but roots out the vice in the one in whom it dwells. Charity is the origin of all virtues, it illumines the mind, cleanses the conscience, gladdens the soul, and shows forth God.

The soul in which charity dwells is not puffed up by pride, not laid waste by envy, not disturbed by anger, not vexed by evil sadness, not blinded by avarice, not inflamed by gluttony, not defiled by lust.

It is always chaste, always pure, always at peace, always kind. Secure in adversity, temperate in prosperity. This is the spiritual cross which everyone is bound to carry, so that by taking up this cross he may follow the footsteps of Christ; whose height rises to God, whose breadth extends to the enemy, whose length reaches to the end of life, whose depth tastes the immensity of divine grace.

This is the charity that is a shield to the one fighting, a reward to the one triumphing; which begins in this way so that it may be perfected in the homeland. For there is a fire in Zion, and a furnace in Jerusalem.⁷ Charity brings forth, as it were, a created trinity; in which trinity the Father is, as it were, the love of God, from which proceeds the love by which man himself is loved as offspring from a father; and from both proceeds the love of neighbor, as the Holy Spirit from both. Likewise there are three distinctions in the one substance of charity, but they differ according to their own property.

Beware, then, o man, if you wish to pursue love, lest you be deceived by the shadow of love; for there is a love of fortune, which comes with prosperity. By this the carnal man loves God, when God has done well by him. There is a love of nature, by which every rational being loves God. For as blessed Augustine says: "No mind has ever been able to hate God." There is a love of grace, which alone has merit; by which God is loved so as to be possessed as a reward.

The first is deficient, the second effective, the third perfecting. The first is of the flesh, the second of sensuality, the third of reason. The first belongs to the false brother, the second to the humble sinner, the third to the justified man. O man, consider how sweet is the love of God, how impure is the love of this world! The love of God is the mother of all virtues, the love of the world is the mother of all vices.

With that love everything is imperfect, with this one everything is perfected; through charity God is sought with the whole heart, sought above all things, found outside all things, loved more than all things; this is the fire which God came to send upon the earth,⁸ to burn up the rust of sins, to consume the chaff of vices. Charity sets its tribunal on high, which worldly fear does not conquer, nor earthly love, the hope of carnal things, or the sadness of adversities. For who can investigate its breadth, which extends even to the enemy? Who can grasp its height, which rises even to God? Who could search out its depth, which is let down even to the abyss of divine wisdom?

Charity is God, and he who abides in charity abides in God, and God in him.⁹ Hear, o man, and do not any longer think it a small thing if you have charity; hear that charity is God—is it a small thing to have God abiding in oneself? Truly it is a great thing to have charity in oneself, because God is charity. This privilege charity alone has, that it is both called God and truly is God, so that it can belong to nothing else. For while every virtue is a gift of God, none besides charity alone has this, that it can be called not only a gift of God, but even God himself.