← The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Day 244: The Virtue of Charity (2025)
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The greatest of all the theological virtues is charity. Fr. Mike explains that charity, or love, is to love God above all things for his own sake and to love our neighbor as ourselves. This includes loving our enemies and also obeying God's commandments, two actions that are not always easy. Most importantly, today's readings remind us that true charity is not loving the Father as servants in fear or as mercenaries looking for a reward but rather as his beloved children responding to him who "first loved us." Today's readings are Catechism paragraphs 1822-1829.
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Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 244. We are reading paragraphs 1822. As always, I am using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes a foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a Year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com ciy and you can click follow or subscribe on your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. Because Today it's day 2:44. As I said, we're reading paragraphs 1822 to 1829. Yesterday we talked about the virtue of hope. Before that we talked about the virtue of faith. So guess what, class we are talking about? Virtue of charity. One thing, right off the bat, I think it's worth acknowledging that charity is love. But it's a very particular kind of love. In paragraph 1822 it says, Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake and our neighbor as ourselves, for the love of God. So as we launch in to love, as we launch into charity, let's call upon the God of love and that triune God, the Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and ask him to be with us, to give us his Holy Spirit, to give us his blessing, to give us his love. In this moment we pray. Father in Heaven, we know that you are love. We know that you are the fullness of everything that we desire. We know that you're the source of all love, that none of us can actually love without you. Because you are love. In this moment, Lord God, we ask you to send your Holy Spirit of charity, your Holy Spirit of love into our hearts, that we can love you above all things, that we can love our neighbor as ourselves. And that even though we have the ability, the power, the virtue of to be able to love ourselves, because Lord God, until we love you, until we love ourselves, we can never love our neighbor. We definitely can't love our enemy. So God, help us. Help us to love you, Help us to love ourselves. Help us to Love our friends and family, our neighbors and even Lord. Help us to love our enemies. Help us to love those who have hurt us. Give us this power now and always. We pray in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is day 244. We are reading paragraphs 1822 to 1829. Charity. Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake and our neighbor as ourselves. For the love of God. Jesus makes charity the new commandment. By loving his own to the end, he makes manifest the Father's love which he receives. By loving one another. The disciples imitate the love of Jesus which they themselves receive, whence Jesus says, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. And again, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Fruit of the Spirit and fullness of the law. Charity keeps the commandments of God and his Christ. Jesus said, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Christ died out of love for us while we were still enemies. The Lord asks us to love as he does even our enemies, to make ourselves the neighbor of those farthest away and to love children and the poor as Christ himself. The Apostle Paul has given an incomparable depiction of charity. Charity is patient and kind. Charity is not jealous or boastful. It is not arrogant or rude. Charity does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Charity bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. If I have not charity, says the apostle, I am nothing, whatever my privilege, service, or even virtue. If I have not charity, I gain nothing. Charity is superior to all the virtues. It is the first of the theological virtues. As St. Paul so faith, hope, charity. Abide these three. But the greatest of these is charity. The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. It is the form of the virtues. It articulates and orders them among themselves. It is the source and the goal of their Christian practice. Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love. The practice of the moral life animated by charity, gives to the Christian the spiritual freedom of the children of God. He no longer stands before God as a slave in servile fear or as a mercenary looking for wages, but as a Son responding to the love of him who first loved us. St. Basil the Great. If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages, we resemble mercenaries. Finally, if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands, we are in the position of children. The fruits of charity are joy, peace and mercy. Charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction. It is benevolence. It fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous. It is friendship and communion. St. Augustine wrote, Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal. That is why we run. We run toward it. And once we reach it, in it we shall find rest. All right, and there we have it. Day 244, paragraphs 1822 to 1829. All about love, all about charity. And let's just go back to the definition that we're given at the very beginning of this paragraph. 1822. Charity is. Is the theological virtue. Remember, we had the cardinal virtues, the human virtues, justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude. And now we have these three theological virtues. Faith, hope, and the greatest of these, love. So here we are. Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake and our neighbor as ourselves, for the love of God. Now, we're going to get to the last couple paragraphs of this section in just a second, because as you probably noted, the next couple paragraphs just unfold that Jesus makes this charity the new commandment. Jesus makes love the new commandment. So remember, he's asked, what are the greatest of all the commandments? And Jesus makes it very, very clear. I'll paraphrase. Love God with everything you have and love your neighbor as yourself. And so this is very important. And not only that, but love is the fulfillment of the commandments. In fact, love and command, this is man. Gosh, this is so important for us to understand. And maybe you've already interiorized this, maybe you've heard this before, but have we really, have we really taken it in? We recognize there are a couple of things that. That indicate whether or not love is present. And Scripture gives them to us. So I believe it's John the Beloved. In one of his letters, he writes, he says, how can we love God, the God we do not see, if we do not love the brother we do see? So taking care of those around us, that is, it's a sign that we are loving God. So if I. How do I know if I love God or not. Well, one of them is, am I loving my neighbor? Am I even striving to love my neighbor? The other here. Jesus makes it so critically clear here in paragraph 1823, when he says, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. He even goes on to say, abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Jesus makes a very, very clear connection between obeying his commandments, obeying the commandments of God, and loving God and loving him. So if I want to have a personal relationship with Jesus, that's a great phrase. That's a great term. That's a great way to express what we want to have. If I want to have a personal relationship with Jesus, I must strive to obey what he has said. I must strive to obey the commandments. And this is just. It's not optional, right? It is a sign and it's a way, right? It's a sign of our love for God, and it's a way that we love God. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. If you don't love me, you will not. I mean, that's essentially what's going on. And of course, none of us are perfect. But to strive to realize I can't just love God in my desires and my affections, I have to actually love God in my actions. This is so, so critical in these couple ways. One, how can I say I love the God I do not see? Or how can I say I love the God I did not see if I do not love the brother I do see? Okay, that's important. But also, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. We have to strive to obey the Lord's commandments. That's one of the reasons why we have this third pillar of the catechism. Okay, so love is not this kind of way out in the, in the ether. Love is not just in the heart. Love has to. It must, it must be translated into action, right? So we have affection, right, with an A. And that's affective love. I love affective love. I love affection. I love feeling like I love God. 100% so good. But what God is calling us to is effective love with an E. An effective love is love that moves. It's love that acts. It's love that isn't just in the affection. It's not just in my heart. It's not just in my emotions or my feelings. It is in my actions. It's in My life. And so that's so, so important. That's again, what one of the reasons why the church gives us this third pillar. It's life in Christ. How do I actually live in Christ? Well, one. Love. Okay, love and do what? Well, love and do what you will. But if you love God, you want to do what he's asked. Okay, now it goes even further. And this is the, the massive challenge. In fact, this is the challenge that. I mean, I don't want to speak for you, maybe for anyone else, I, I maybe like to overlook this one, because Jesus makes it very clear that if we're going to love, we're going to love our neighbor. Okay, duh, that makes sense. We're going to love our neighbor. We're going to love the person who is near us. I have a friend who says, when Jesus says to love your neighbor, I think he really means that. He means the person who lives next door. Literally. Person who lives next door. How often do we ignore our neighbor? The person who lives next door? And so he has this ministry which is called love thy neighbor. And so they invite people over to a barbecue to some kind of meal at least once a week. Just go up and down the block, hey, if you're interested, come on over to our house and to try to get into relationship with their neighbors. Because the reality, and this is his, his line, you can only really love people within, I think he says, 10ft of each other. I can't just love someone in the distance or someone in my affections, like, oh, I love those people over there, but I don't actually. I'm not really in their lives. It's very difficult to actually love anyone like this. So it says here, 1825, we are called to love, make ourselves the neighbor of those farthest away, to love children and the poor as Christ himself. But here's the biggest challenge, the one that, as I was alluding to, I like to ignore. Maybe you like to ignore this as well. Jesus commands us. He asks us to love as he does, even our enemies. Jesus asks us to love our enemies, which is easy to say and it is so difficult to do. It's something that we actually can't do without the Lord's grace. And yet at the same time, if we don't, we're nothing, right? 1 Corinthians. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful. Love is not arrogant or rude. The whole thing. And St. Paul goes on to say, if I have not charity, right? If I have not love, I Am nothing. This is so important. Whatever my privileges, whatever my service or even virtue. Whatever I do, if I do miracles, If I have not charity, I gain nothing. And so this is one of those virtues that we cannot exempt ourselves from. This is one of those virtues that we can't ignore. This is one of those virtues that we can't pick and choose. This is one that we have to strive for. Now, keep this in mind. None of us is going to do this perfectly. But I have a friend, her name is Sarah Swofford. And Sarah says that. She says I'm strive not for perfection. Because perfection does not exist. But I'm going to strive. I'm going to strive after the Lord. Because I can always strive not for perfection. Because perfection doesn't exist. I mean, yes, there's perfection in the theological sense. But you know what I'm trying to say. Do not heat coals on yourself. Say, I must not love God because I fall into sin. All of us have broken hearts. All of us have broken lives and situations. All of us are going to fall into sin. But it's that trusting in the Lord to have mercy on us. That loving the Lord and wanting the mercy, that is the key. And here's how we're going to end this little section. Paragraph 1828 says this. It says, the practice of the moral life animated by charity, right? Animated by love. Gives to the Christian the spiritual freedom of the children of God. So trying to live that moral life animated by love. Gives to us. Gives to you, the Christian. The spiritual freedom of the children of God. Now goes on to say the next sentence is so powerful. It says this. He no longer stands before God as a slave in servile fear. So we don't approach God and say, okay, what else does he want me to do? How much more does he want me to serve Him? This sense of we do not approach God as a slave out of servile fear. But also it says, it's so good. Or as a mercenary looking for wages. And how many times do we do this? How many times would we say, okay, actually, I do approach God. I approach God just with that fear. I approach God with the sense of. Not fear of God in the good sense, but servile fear. Servile fear, which I'm afraid of God. And so, okay, I'm going to be careful. I don't step outside the boundary. Because I'm just afraid of God. Or as a mercenary looking for wages. Meaning I'm going to do this not because I love anyone. But just because Either I want to avoid hell or because I want this reward at the end. And if we're motivated by that, we can move still, right? The commandments, we can still follow them. But the Christian will strive for this, strive to be animated by love of God. This is actually summarized in the act of contrition. It goes like this. It says, oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they have offended you, O God, who are all good and deserving of all my love, goes on to say, I firmly resolve with the help of thy grace, to confess my sins, do penance and amend my life. But catch this. It says, I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven. Right? So there's a fear right there. And the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend you, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. This is actually expressed in that quote by St. Basil. It says, if we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we are in the position of slaves. Okay, so out of fear of punishment, it's not bad, right? If we turn away from evil, that's always a good thing. But I'm doing this as a slave. We're going to talk about the prodigal son in just a second, so put a pin in that. If we turn away from evil out of fear of punishment, we're in the position of slaves. If we pursue the enticement of wages, we resemble mercenaries. And how many times we do that? I pursue the enticement of wages. I resemble a mercenary. One of my favorite, favorite quotes that I. It's hard to find from CS Lewis. I think it may be a poem that he wrote, but it says something along the lines of, I've always had nothing but a mercenary heart. I've always had nothing but a mercenary heart, willing to sell my soul to the highest bidder, willing to give my love to the highest bidder. And I can sometimes look at myself in this and think, yeah, that's me. There are many times when I choose the good because, man, I don't want to go to hell. Or I choose the good because God has promised something. You know, God has promised heaven, God has promised himself. God has promised these, these. These blessings. And no, that's not bad. It's not bad. It's just not perfect contrition. Of course, God is so good, God is so humble that he even accepts our imperfect contrition. But St. Basil goes on to say, finally, if we obey for the sake of the good itself and out of love for him who commands, we are in the position of children. And this is the last thing I said, put a pin in the prodigal son. The prodigal son is an incredible parable, obviously, but it's a parable not just about the son who runs away and comes back as he's hungry and he's received by the father. It's also a parable about the older son. In fact, someone might even say, you might even make the case that the parable of the prodigal son is mostly about the older son. Well, we'll just share it. It's about both sons. The younger son, who goes and lives a life of sin, comes back to the father, and received by the father, is celebrated by the father, restored to his place as a son of the father. But also the older son, that older son, what does he say as he's resentful of his father's love for his younger brother? The older son says to his father, look, all these years I have slaved for you. You can. You can hear the father. I mean, just Father doesn't say this, but it's there between the lines. All these years I have slave for you, and yet you never even gave me a kid to feast on with my friends. Imagine the father saying this. I never wanted you to be a slave. I never wanted you to slave for me. I just wanted a son. I never wanted a slave. I just wanted a son. And this is so often, if we have this guilt hanging over our heads of like, God always just wants more. He always wants more. He always wants more. Then our vision of God is no different than the world, because that's what the world wants, right? The world wants us to simply perform, perform, perform, perform. And our worth is based off of our. Our performance. But here's the father who says, essentially, I didn't want you to slave. I've never wanted you to slave. I want a son. I want to be able to work shoulder to shoulder with my son, not with this slave. But it's. It's interesting, right? He says, all these years I've slaved for you, and not once did you offer a kid for me to feast on with my friends. Now, keep in mind the celebration welcoming the younger son back. The father was there. The father was celebrating. The whole community there was celebrating the return of the younger son. But the older son, he doesn't want the father to celebrate him he doesn't want to even celebrate with the father. He says, you never even gave me a kid to feast on with my friends. He doesn't even want to feast. He doesn't even want to celebrate with his father. He's stuck. He's stuck in this place of maybe a mercenary heart, maybe a servant's heart, a slave's heart. And his father wants him to be his son, and he wants his son to see him as his father. And this is the invitation for all of us. Now, I already said last thing, but this is kind of the lastest of the last things you might say, father. What's the difference though? You said before that love, charity, right? The virtue of charity has to be an action or it has to be effective, not just affective. And then you just said, though, that our relationship with the father is not performative, right? It doesn't have to perform. Yes. So is that a contradiction, right? Is that a dichotomy? How are those two things true at the same time? Well, they're true at the same time because it's not what I do, it is how I do it. So, yes, God calls us to follow his commandments. He calls us to work. He calls us to do these certain things, to follow his commandments, to love our neighbor. But he calls us to do it in such a way, what in what's the way? As a son, as a daughter. But I always think about it like this, and maybe I shared this in the Bible any year, because it's just one of the most beautiful ways to imagine what the father's vision of his, both of his sons would be to life with the father, life with his sons. It wouldn't be that the sons are on perpetual vacation. It wouldn't be the sons are on perpetual spring break. Like, yeah, you're, you're a child of the father living in the father's house. So just, hey, guys, sleep in, do whatever, whatever you want. Let me take care of everything. No, it's that sense of the father saying, I want to work shoulder. This is our family, this is our household. This is the, the place we need to run. And so what I want to do is I want to work with you, not as a slave, but this image of, okay, I'm so sorry this is going on. But just like picture this non 1st century Middle Eastern house, but just maybe your house. Here's the son, older son, he's upstairs and he hears the father. He's up, he's moving around, he's making breakfast, he's Making the coffee. And he's waiting upstairs. He's like. He's waiting till his dad goes out into the fields, until he comes down. When he comes down, he sees his little note. And the note says, here's all the things you need to do today. And so the son's like, yeah, that's fine. Whatever. I'm gonna go do the things my dad's asking me to do. He does them like a slave. But that's not what the father wants. Imagine what the father wants. The father's image is, yeah, he's downstairs. He's making breakfast. He's putting the coffee on. And the older son comes down, and they get to have breakfast together. They get to have a cup of coffee together. They get to talk about the day together. And the older son gets to say to his dad, hey, what. What are we doing today? And the father gets to say, okay, here's what we're gonna do. First, we gotta go out to the back 80. We gotta take. We gotta plow some stuff here. But, you know, there's that fence. What do you think about that fence? And the older son gets to say, I think we need to fix that. We need to take care of this other thing first. And they're talking about this, and they're planning their day together, and then they go out to work. Now, in both cases, there's a list of things they need to do. But in the second case, they're doing it together. They're doing it so differently. It's done as a beloved child of the Father. And that's the motivation. So here in section, in the catechism, here on the virtue of charity, it makes it so absolutely clear, the practice of the moral life. Again, we have to do what God asks us. We need to follow his commandments, the practice of the moral life animated by charity or animated by love. This relationship with the Father gives to the Christian the spiritual freedom of the children of God. You're no longer before God as a slave. Servile fear. You're no longer as a mercenary looking for wages, but as a son responding to the love of the one who has first loved us. Does that make sense? I just. I love it, man. I want to live like that. And I think you want to live like that, too. It's not easy. At the same time, that's what the Father wants. So let's do that. I'm praying that that happens for you today. Please pray for me. I am praying for you. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.