People can develop certain habits that might appear as moral values: fortitude, sobriety, hard work and similar virtues. Yet if the acts of the various moral virtues are to be rightly directed, one needs to take into account the extent to which they foster openness and union with others. That is made possible by the charity that God infuses. Without charity, we may perhaps possess only apparent virtues, incapable of sustaining life in common. Thus, Saint Thomas Aquinas could say – quoting Saint Augustine – that the temperance of a greedy person is in no way virtuous. 69Cf. Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 23, a. 7; Saint Augustine, Contra Julianum, 4, 18: PL 44, 748: “How many pleasures do misers forego, either to increase their treasures or for fear of seeing them diminish!”. Saint Bonaventure, for his part, explained that the other virtues, without charity, strictly speaking do not fulfil the commandments “the way God wants them to be fulfilled”. 70“Secundum acceptionem divinam” ( Scriptum super Sententiis, lib. 3, dist. 27, a. 1, q. 1, concl. 4).
The spiritual stature of a person’s life is measured by love, which in the end remains “the criterion for the definitive decision about a human life’s worth or lack thereof”. 71Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Deus Caritas Est (25 December 2005), 15: AAS 98 (2006), 230. Yet some believers think that it consists in the imposition of their own ideologies upon everyone else, or in a violent defence of the truth, or in impressive demonstrations of strength. All of us, as believers, need to recognize that love takes first place: love must never be put at risk, and the greatest danger lies in failing to love (cf. 1 Cor 13:1-13).
Saint Thomas Aquinas sought to describe the love made possible by God’s grace as a movement outwards towards another, whereby we consider “the beloved as somehow united to ourselves”. 72Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 27, a. 2, resp. Our affection for others makes us freely desire to seek their good. All this originates in a sense of esteem, an appreciation of the value of the other. This is ultimately the idea behind the word “charity”: those who are loved are “dear” to me; “they are considered of great value”. 73Cf. ibid., I-II, q. 26, a. 3, resp. And “the love whereby someone becomes pleasing ( grata) to another is the reason why the latter bestows something on him freely ( gratis)”. 74Ibid., q. 110, a. 1, resp.
Love, then, is more than just a series of benevolent actions. Those actions have their source in a union increasingly directed towards others, considering them of value, worthy, pleasing and beautiful apart from their physical or moral appearances. Our love for others, for who they are, moves us to seek the best for their lives. Only by cultivating this way of relating to one another will we make possible a social friendship that excludes no one and a fraternity that is open to all.