Charity: the Core of Catholic Spirituality
Catholic spirituality, including our prayer life, is founded on charity. The goal of our spirituality is to help us grow in a personal relationship with God. At its heart, that means to live in charity. Let’s discuss what charity is, how it is formed in us, and how we can engage the power of charity in our spiritual growth.
What is Charity?
Charity is a theological virtue. A theological virtue is given to us (an “infused virtue”) as a gift of sanctifying grace at the time of baptism. Sanctifying grace is God’s presence within our souls that
- Gives us a relationship with God – God himself bridges the gap between fallen human nature and God.
- Gives us a new nature – a share in God’s divine nature. This means that we literally become a “new man” (St. Paul’s word) when we receive sanctifying grace. Just as human nature is greater than animal nature, our sanctified nature is greater than human nature. This share in God’s divine nature does not make us God, but it does empower us to love as God loves, and therefore to love God. Without this help, having a true loving relationship of friendship with God would be impossible.
- Helps us live out our divine nature by growing in our relationship with God.
Charity is specifically God’s power to love as He loves. A major part of the transformation at the center of Catholic spirituality is maximizing that love in our lives. But how do we do that if Charity is a gift from God?
How is Charity Formed Within Us?
Charity is given to us at our spiritual birth of baptism just like muscles are given to us at our physical birth. Muscles grow naturally from infancy to adulthood. But what happens if we don’t use those muscles? First of all, they don’t get big. Secondly, if you really don’t use your muscles they eventually begin to atrophy. They may never completely disappear, but they actually get smaller and eventually become quite useless. On the other hand, if we exercise them our muscles continue to grow healthily. If we step it up a notch and enter into a physical training program that leads us through increasingly intense workouts our muscles actually get larger.
The Theological Virtues work the same way. If we want to keep them – and therefore keep our relationship with God – strong then we need to exercise them. If we want spiritual growth – taking our intimacy and love with God to the next level – then we need to step it up and exercise more intensely. That what practical Catholic spirituality is all about.
Engaging the Power of Charity
God laid out the path of charity by giving us three theological virtues. These virtues build our relationship with God the same way any human relationship is built. This is the path of spiritual growth that all of us must follow.
- Step 1: Hope – Hope is trust in God’s promises. All relationships are built on the foundation of trust. Unless we believe in the integrity and honesty of the other person, we will not feel free to open ourselves to him or her. But if we come to believe first that the person is honestly who he says he is, and secondly that he wills our good, then we can become vulnerable with him.
- Step 2: Faithfulness: Faithfulness is trust that what God has revealed about himself is true. While this seems a lot like hope, it takes trust one step further. If we trust that what a person reveals is true, our relationship becomes open to truly knowing the other person and being known. This next step in a relationship is called intimacy. Faith empowers intimacy with God.
- Step 3: Commitment: Here God leaves room for our free will. We exercise that will in each stage by cooperating with God’s grace to strengthen each virtue, and therefore to strengthen our relationship with Him. But we must then dedicate ourselves to totally invest in the relationship. In human relationships this happens most beautifully in the sacrament of marriage. With God this commitment happens sacramentally in Confirmation and every time we receive the Holy Eucharist. It happens in our life when at some point we make the conscious choice to live for God every minute of the day.
- Step 4: Charity: This commitment, built atop the foundation of trust and intimacy, brings us to the point of true love. Jesus Christ modeled true love for us on the Cross when he gave up everything or our sake. To truly love means to choose to make a complete gift of yourself for the sake of the other’s good. When we give everything we are to God, we have arrived at charity – true love for God.
Catholic Spirituality is Founded on Grace
Of course, at each stage, we need God’s help. As mere human beings, even without Original Sin, how could we hope to know God? What could we give God that he does not already have? How could we will God’s good when God is the source of all good?
But God also invites us to participate in our relationship with Him. So at each step, we must work to strengthen our trust, to grow in intimacy, and to love God more completely.
When we participate in God’s grace in our lives, our relationship with God will grow. We will then discover the true purpose, mission, and fulfillment of our lives. To do this, we’ll need to practice all five elements of Catholic spirituality
- Prayer grounded in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ
- Study: a joyful celebration of the truth
- A community of love
- A sense of excitement for the adventure of faith.
Brought to you by Jeffrey S. Arrowood at From the Abbey, dedicated to helping you rediscover the JOY of learning and living your faith so you can grow in intimacy with God.