The love with which we love God and neighbor summarizes in itself all the greatness and depth of the other divine precepts. This is what the only heavenly Teacher teaches us: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your understanding; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:37-40). Therefore, if you lack the time to study page by page all the Scriptures, or to remove all the veils that cover their words and penetrate all the secrets of the Scriptures, practice charity, which encompasses everything. Thus you will possess what you have learned and what you have not been able to decipher. Indeed, if you have charity, you already know a principle that contains within itself what you perhaps do not understand. In the passages of Scripture open to your intelligence, charity is manifest, and in the hidden ones, charity is hidden. If you put this virtue into practice in your habits, you possess all the divine oracles, whether you understand them or not.
Therefore, brothers, pursue charity, the sweet and healthy bond of hearts; without it, the richest person is poor, and with it, the poor person is rich. It is charity that gives us patience in afflictions, moderation in prosperity, courage in adversity, joy in good works; it offers us a safe refuge in temptations, generously gives hospitality to the helpless, gladdens the heart when it finds true brothers, and lends patience to suffer traitors.
Charity offered pleasing sacrifices in the person of Abel; it gave Noah a safe refuge during the flood; it was Abraham's faithful companion on all his journeys; She inspired Moses with gentle sweetness in the midst of insults and David with great meekness in his tribulations. She softened the devouring flames of the three Hebrew youths in the furnace and gave courage to the Maccabees in the tortures of the fire.
Charity was chaste in Susanna's marriage, chaste with Hannah in her widowhood, and chaste with Mary in her virginity. It was the cause of holy liberty in Paul to correct and humility in Peter to obey; human in Christians to repent of their faults, divine in Christ to forgive them. But what praise can I give to charity, after the Lord Himself did so, teaching us through the mouth of His Apostle that it is the most excellent of all virtues? Showing us a path of sublime perfection, He says: Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but have not charity, I am as resounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have faith so great as to remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing. And though I distribute all my goods to the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not charity, it profits me nothing. Charity is patient, it is kind. Charity does not envy, it does not act rashly, it is not arrogant, it is not ambitious, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily provoked, it thinks no evil, it rejoices in evil, it rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things. Charity never fails (1 Corinthians 13:1-8).
Imagine, if you can, something stronger than charity, not to avenge injuries, but rather to heal them. Imagine something more faithful, not out of vanity, but for supernatural motives, looking toward eternal life. For all that one suffers in the present life is because one firmly believes in what is revealed of the life to come; if one tolerates evils, it is because one hopes for the good things that God promises in heaven; therefore, charity never ends.
Seek, then, charity, and meditating on it in holiness, strive to bear fruits of holiness. And whatever you find most excellent in it that I have not noticed, let it be manifest in your habits.
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