The Priest as a Man of Charity
by Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila, D.D.
On The Integrating Role of Charity as Friendship in Human and Spiritual Priestly Formation
1. Introduction
Pastores Dabo Vobis (PDV) reminds us, “The formation of future priests […] is considered by the Church one of the most demanding and important tasks for the future of the evangelization of humanity.”[1] In carrying out this most demanding and important task, we presently face serious challenges. In the past, Christian families offered a solid remote formation that served as a basis for seminary formation. Today, in most cases, this remote preparation is largely absent. Indeed, candidates often lack a sufficient level of catechesis and knowledge of the faith;[2] they have been affected by the worldliness that surrounds an era wounded by broken families, pornography and a sex-saturated culture in general;[3] they lack affective maturity; and some of their dysfunctionalities require the aid of an authentic Catholic psychology, rooted in an integral view of the human person and the mystery of Christ.
Yet, these same candidates have had a profound encounter with the love and mercy of Jesus Christ, similar to the encounter that the Samaritan woman had with His mercy and truth.[4] After all, it is God who calls them to be priests. This same love and mercy calls them not to despair like Judas did,[5] but to entrust their lives to Jesus and to the Church as Peter did.[6]
Candidates to the priesthood can do that in hope. The Holy Spirit, who leads to the Truth that sets the human person free, is also their principal formator.[7] And that Truth in Person, namely, our Lord Jesus Christ,[8] is rich in mercy. Indeed, He experiences our misery as if it were His own,[9] and more importantly, He can destroy the very cause of our misery thanks to the power of His love.[10] For this reason, future priests are not to be afraid to acknowledge and contemplate the truth about themselves. They are not to be afraid to relate this same truth to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in prayer. This is why the current challenges mentioned above can be faced with hope. As a witness to this same hope, I would like to reflect with you today on the ways in which human and spiritual priestly formation interrelate.
The general topic assigned to me is “Communion with Christ: How Human and Spiritual Formation Interrelate.” This topic suggests that the answer to the question on how human and spiritual formation interrelate is to be found in the communion with Christ. However, I would like to narrow down this answer a bit more. What aspect of that communion with Christ helps us to integrate human and spiritual formation in the seminary?
I propose that the virtue of charity, understood as human and divine friendship, is the integrating factor of the relationship between human and spiritual priestly formation. In reality, the thesis that I am proposing is found in PDV. Expanding on the principles found therein, especially its description of the priest as a man of charity, a man who lives in deep communion and friendship with Christ; I intend to pinpoint some key theological guidelines that flesh out what Saint John Paul II indicated in PDV on this regard.
I will divide my presentation into three sections. The first section will be dedicated to show the seminal thoughts of St. John Paul II on the priest as a man of charity, a man who is to have a special relationship of supernatural friendship with God. The second section will be devoted to deepen our understanding about the supernatural relationship of friendship with Christ the High Priest as the foundation of priestly identity and mission. The third and last section will look at how this relationship of charity between Christ and the ordained priest inserts us into the logic of the gift of self as the proper theological locus, wherein to understand charity’s integrating and leading role in the interrelationship between human and spiritual priestly formation.
2. The Priest as a Man of Charity
St. John Paul II teaches that the model for priestly formation is found in Christ’s appointing the twelve to be with him and to be sent out.[11] He teaches that Christ’s aim for “this time is to develop a relationship of deep communion and friendship with himself.”[12] This exemplary and archetypical period of priestly formation prepares the disciples and every candidate to the priesthood to “learn how to respond from the heart to Christ’s basic question: ‘Do you love me?’ (Jn 21:15). For the future priest the answer can only mean total self-giving,”[13] that is the total surrender of the human will to the divine will.
Thus, John Paul II teaches that one’s formation to the priesthood is to be oriented to charity and the gift of self. More concretely, it should be oriented to answer with one’s life to Christ’s love and gift of self to us, members of the Church.[14] In the heart of the future priest is to be a deep receptivity to the love of Jesus Christ, who loves us first.[15]
Within this goal, spiritual formation integrates or unifies the other dimensions of formation. Indeed, “for every priest his spiritual formation is the core which unifies and gives life to his being a priest and his acting as a priest.”[16] Moreover, spiritual formation is all about living in intimate and unceasing union with God and the mysteries of Christ. Thus, its core is friendship with God.
For this reason, the Second Vatican Council in Optatam Totius (OT) teaches future priests that their spiritual formation is all about forming “the habit of drawing close to him [Christ] as friends in every detail of their lives.”[17] St. John Paul II comments on this text with the following words: “The Council text, while taking account of the absolute transcendence of the Christian mystery, describes the communion of future priests with Jesus in terms of friendship. And indeed it is not an absurdity for a person to aim at this, for it is the priceless gift of Christ, who said to his apostles, ‘No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you’ (Jn 15:15).”[18]
Thus, St. John Paul II draws the important and essential conclusion that has inspired me to write this essay: “The priest is, therefore, a man of charity […]. In this sense preparation for the priesthood must necessarily involve a proper training in charity”[19] At the very end of PDV, St. John Paul II brings up again the theme of friendship with Christ, namely, the theme of a priest as a man of charity. Thereby, he shows how central this idea is for him. Indeed, the great Pope addresses priests in the following words: “I wish for all of you the grace to rekindle daily the gift of God you have received with the laying on of hands (cf. 2 Tm. 1:6), to feel the comfort of the deep friendship which binds you to Jesus and unites you with one another.”[20]
3. Priestly Charity as Friendship with Christ the High Priest
Having outlined the seminal ideas found in PDV concerning the priest as a man of charity; let us now proceed to the second point to deepen our understanding about the relationship of priestly charity – that is, the understanding of friendship with Christ the High Priest – as the foundation of priestly identity and mission. To do so, I will turn to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. The Angelic Doctor teaches that “charity is the friendship of man for God.”[21] And as PDV has shown, such friendship is foundational for the life of the ordained priest.
Indeed, applied to the life of the ordained priest, the following words of Jesus are at the heart of everything the ordained priest does in relationship with Him: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”[22] To abide in Christ means to enter into a relationship of friendship with Him that is analogous to the relationship between God the Father and the Son. Jesus is the Way.[23] Becoming sons in the Son, we are inserted in the very life of the Trinity.[24]
Christ’s love for His Father – and friendship is a habitual form of love – is manifested in His obedience unto death and gift of self for the Church. Analogously, our love for and friendship with Christ is manifested in our obedience and gift of self to Him and to the Church. For this reason, the Lord says: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.”[25]
This reality just explained is now expressed in a synthetic form by two interconnected sentences. On the one hand, Christ speaks to us about our relationship of friendship with Him, about our abiding in His love that is analogous to His love for the Father: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”[26] On the other hand, Christ specifies the relationship that exists between friendship and obedience in saying: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”[27] Sheer obedience does not create friendship, let alone this supernatural kind of friendship. Thus, obedience, in this text, is the expression of a supernatural friendship. Obedience is founded upon this relationship with Christ, this abiding in, which the word charity signifies.
This supernatural friendship consists in the mutual and known benevolence between Christ and the ordained priest, a tenderness, mercy and compassion founded upon a certain “communicatio.”[28] Our friendship with Christ is mutual and known. It is a reciprocal love known to both parties. Indeed, Christ knows His sheep and His sheep know Him.[29] Moreover, our friendship with Christ is based on a kind of love that is free; a love that seeks the good of the other and not merely the good things the other person has; a kind of elective and spiritual love called benevolence.
It is quite clear that our Lord freely seeks our good. He has died for us and for our salvation. God does not love us with the sheer love of utility. After all, we are useless servants.[30] There is nothing we can give to God that He has not given us first.[31] Yet, God loves us seeking our good, namely, our sanctification or salvation.[32] He loves us by name, in a particular way, unique to every human being. Christ came so that we may have life and have it in abundance.[33] God loved the world and sent His only Son not to judge the world but to save it.[34] In this relationship, it was God who loved us first, teaching us in this way how to love, loving us when we were sinners.[35] He gave His own life for us, his friends and enemies. [36] For this reason, each and every one of us can personally say with St. Paul that Christ “loved me and gave Himself up for me.”[37] Here we have the foundational encounter and experience upon which all priestly formation rests. The priest is to be a man of charity because he must know himself as a beloved son in the Son.
Now, in which measure can I seek God’s good, the good of Him who is Infinite and perfect goodness? The answer to this question is that I can freely cooperate with God’s plan of salvation oriented to the manifestation of his glory – the clarification of his Goodness[38] – and to the communication of His Infinite Goodness.[39] Right here, in our benevolent love for Christ, is where we find the foundation or fundamentum of that priestly and sacrificial obedience and gift of self. Since no one has greater love than the one who gives his life for his friends,[40] out of love for Christ, we are called to say with St. Paul: “for me life is Christ and death is gain.”[41] We live for God and we die for Him because we are His.[42] At this point, thanks to this reciprocal and benevolent love that is not only mutual but also known, thanks to the reciprocal gift of self, the priest as a man of charity can say with the Song of Songs: “my Beloved is mine and I am His.”[43]
To go a bit deeper in our understanding of this reality, it is important to see how our friendship with Christ is founded upon a certain “communication” or communicatio. Here is the basis to understand why all human formation must be Christocentric. In other words, priestly human formation should aim to develop the human person according to the Truth revealed in Christ.
We are talking here about a certain communication or sharing of secrets, a certain communion of mind, heart, and will in which the priest is one in mind and heart, in intellect and will, with Christ. Friendship with Christ is founded upon a certain communication of gifts received from God, thanks to which we participate in Divine life[44] and are called to fellowship (societas) with the Son.[45] Indeed, the Father, who gave us His Son, will also give us every sort of goods. These are the goods that grant us access to the very life of God.
Friendship with Christ is also founded upon the communication of secrets. Christ does not call us servants because He has told us the secrets He has heard from His Father.[46] While for some Christ’s message appears in parables, the secrets of the Kingdom have been revealed to us.[47] In turn, the priest as a man of charity is to have a hidden life in Christ,[48] so as to taste the intimacy that friends enjoy. If we tell our secrets to Christ in prayer, He will tell us His. This is how both human and intellectual formation are to be integrated with spiritual formation thanks to the virtue of charity. This is the secret to become a good preacher and a good theologian. This is how the priest, as man of charity, knows God and about Him and is able to proclaim Him and invite others to encounter Him.
Moreover, friendship with Christ consists in a love whereby there is a communication or communion of intellect and will. In this hidden life in Christ, the priest, as a man of charity, is called to think with the mind of Christ, to have the same feelings as Jesus, to freely will what Christ wills, and to educate accordingly his thoughts, feelings, and desires.[49] This is how there can be a reciprocal gift of self, first from Christ to the ordained minister, and second from the ordained minister to Christ and to those he serves. To this end, supernatural grace heals and elevates fallen human nature by empowering us with infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Through His obedience to the Father, Jesus gives Himself, makes a gift of self for the Church, that is, for each and every one of her members. St. Paul says: “Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her [δλδκληροV].”[50] Properly speaking, gift means a giving with “no strings attached,” in the sense that it is gratuitous, without intention of payback.[51] The explanation for this gratuitousness is love itself. For this reason, one gives something for free to another, because one wants the good for him. So, the gift of one’s love is the first and foremost gratuitous gift that a person offers to another in giving something to him or her. Love is, then, the primordial gift whereby other gifts are given freely and with liberality.[52] It is then that one begins to love another.[53] And Aquinas explains that, “we are related as to ourselves to those whom we love in that love, thereby communicating ourselves to them in some way.”[54] Christ communicates or gives Himself to us so that in gratitude we may give ourselves to Him, by giving Him the treasure we value the most, namely, our own will.[55]
What has been said about the priest as man of charity, who lives in friendship with Christ the High Priest, fleshes out what PDV contained in seminal form. Indeed, this supernatural relationship of friendship with Christ the High Priest is the foundation of priestly identity and mission. This same relationship should have an integrating role in the interrelation of human and spiritual priestly formation.
4. The Integrating Role of Charity in Human and Spiritual Priestly Formation
Our previous theological reflections on the priest as a man of charity have inserted us into the logic of the gift of self. It is within this logic that one can better understand why charity, as friendship with Christ, has an integrating role in the relation between human and spiritual priestly formation. The word integration comes from the Latin integer and the Greek ????????V.[56] Both the Latin and the Greek roots of this word signify wholeness, perfection, and health. To say that charity has an integrating role, then, ammounts to saying that it makes human formation whole; that charity perfects human formation; that charity affords a human formation that is integral, non-reductionistic, healing, healthy, and salutary.
The text where our reflections on the integrating role of charity depart comes again from PDV. St. John Paul II teaches that human formation finds its fulfillment, completion, or perfection in spiritual formation. “Human formation, when it is carried out in the context of an anthropology which is open to the full truth regarding the human person, leads to and finds its completion in spiritual formation.”[57] That full truth about the human person is reveled in the mystery of the Incarnate Word, who gave himself for us as Gaudium et Spes 22 reminds us: “only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. […]. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.”[58] Thus only the gift of self answers Christ’s love – namely, it is only in charity – that the human person finds true fulfillment. For the human person, “the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.”[59]
Human formation is the basis of all formation because the subject who is being formed is the human person. Moreover, human formation is the foundation of all formation inasmuch as human nature is assumed, healed, and elevated by grace.[60] For this reason, as St. John Paul II explained in PDV, human formation finds its fulfillment in spiritual formation.[61] Human formation finds its fulfillment in that friendship with Christ, which is at the heart of spiritual formation according to Optatam Totius.[62] In other words, human formation finds its fulfillment in charity.
Thomas Aquinas understood what we call today human formation with the notion of education. According to the Angelic Doctor, education is to be understood as “the conducting and promoting [of the human person] to the perfect state of man inasmuch as he is man, that is to say, to the state of virtue.”[63] However, St. Thomas also taught energetically that without charity there cannot be perfect or true virtues that lead us to heaven.[64] What I want to propose is that every human virtue can be seen in light of this reciprocal love, charity, between God and man.
Human virtues and human formation find their fulfillment and perfection only when seen under this aspect, under the aspect of the truth about man revealed in Christ. Indeed, if we keep in mind what friendship with Christ means, we will see that this is exactly the perspective that St. Augustine offers us, a perspective that we need to rediscover in order to properly understand how human and spiritual formation interrelate.
If the priest is to be a man of charity, there is an evident crucial role in human formation for the loving relationship with God that is captured by the word friendship. This crucial role suggests that the first way in which we should look at the cardinal virtues is as an ordinata dilectio, as an order of love. This is exactly how St. Augustine conceived them. In his work Of the Morals of the Catholic Church, he explains that the cardinal virtues are four forms of love. He defines them as follows:
[T]emperance is love giving itself entirely to that which is loved; fortitude is love readily bearing all things for the sake of the loved object; justice is love serving only the loved object, and therefore ruling rightly; prudence is love distinguishing with sagacity between what hinders it and what helps it.[65]
Considering, then, that God is the chief good, and that all virtues are true only if they are animated by charity, Augustine moves into a deeper understanding. There we see the primacy of one’s relationship of friendship with God in the development of the cardinal virtues:
The object of this love is not anything, but only God, the chief good, the highest wisdom, the perfect harmony. So we may express the definition thus: that temperance is love keeping itself entire and incorrupt for God; fortitude is love bearing everything readily for the sake of God; justice is love serving God only, and therefore ruling well all else, as subject to man; prudence is love making a right distinction between what helps it towards God and what might hinder it.[66]
What St. Augustine says here is applicable not only to the cardinal virtues but also to every virtue that falls under their “province,” so to speak. For example, when seen from the perspective of charity as friendship with God, temperance is love keeping itself entire and incorrupt for God. Chastity, as a virtue that falls under the “province” of temperance, is also to be understood from this same perspective of charity. Now, obviously, what Augustine says here is not that temperance, fortitude, justice, or prudence have no essence of their own. They are distinct virtues, just like every other virtue that falls into their province.[67] Yet none of these virtues are true or perfect unless charity leads them unto the final end of the human person, a relationship of friendship, of intimacy, of union in the heart of the Trinity.
For this reason, Thomas Aquinas speaks of charity as the form of the virtues.[68] For our topic, this means that priestly human formation is to be oriented to form priests as men of charity. Otherwise, this human formation risks being insufficient and not authentically and truly human; that is to say, human formation, unless oriented towards charity, risks not being in conformity with the truth about man revealed in Christ.
In this way, the perspective of charity opens new vistas to human formation. On the one hand, this perspective protects us from looking at the growth in human virtues as a narcissistic and individualistic project. Moreover, it also allows us to overcome a sort of Pelagian or Semi-Pelagian attitude, when it comes to human formation and the growth in the human virtues.[69] On the other hand, the perspective of charity allows us to look at human formation from the viewpoint of a sound and integral anthropology open to the truth about the human person revealed in Christ. It allows us to understand every virtue within the logic of the gift of self.
Let us consider, for example, the notion of “affective maturity.” If we adopt the perspective of charity, the notion of affective maturity will be understood within the Christocentric anthropology of the gift of self that we find in Gaudium et Spes. Again, this is already found in nuce in PDV. It teaches that affective maturity “is the result of an education in true and responsible love.”[70] Hence, the perspective of charity that I propose here is essential for both the acquisition and the understanding of affective maturity. “Affective maturity presupposes an awareness that love has a central role in human life.”[71] It consists in that true and responsible love, whereby we love God above all things and above all persons; that kind of love whereby we love others as God has loved us. Affective maturity, therefore, aims at educating or leading future priests to become integrated persons, men of true virtue, men of charity. It aims at ordering their affections and love, so that they may enjoy the true freedom of the children of God, whose perfection is found in loving God with all of our strength or powers (potentiae).[72]
Indeed, the light of charity allows us to understand affective maturity as a result of true freedom, that is to say, as the result of knowing the Truth which sets us free.[73] As St. Thomas says, “freedom from sin is true freedom which is united to the servitude to justice.”[74] Karol Wojty?a unfolds this notion in The Acting Person when he affirms: “Human freedom is not fulfilled by subordinating truth to itself but by subordinating itself to the truth.”[75]
In this way, moral or true freedom is acquired through the use of one’s freedom of choice. While the second is innate, the first results from our own good choices and the work of supernatural grace. Moral freedom adds to one’s freedom of choice the habit of using the latter well. It results from having educated one’s affectivity to be an ally rather than an obstacle in doing what is truly good, namely, loving God above all else and others as God has loved us. Acquired or moral freedom, and affective maturity as its counterpart, confers on the human person a new way of self-possession and self-governance. The acquisition of moral freedom by subordinating one’s freedom of choice and one’s affectivity to the truth about the good entails the necessary growth in self-possession so as to make a sincere gift of self. For this reason, we find in this concept of moral freedom a sort of kingship, a sort of regal freedom to be identified in the supernatural life with the freedom of the children of God.[76]
Now, as was said, this way of understanding affective maturity in the light of charity and truth overcomes narcissism, individualism, and Pelagianism. Virtues are oriented to find their fulfillment in love not in selfish perfectionism. Virtues are not just for oneself but also for others. Without grace and charity virtues can never attain their fulfillment. Consequently, both freedom and affective maturity, when contemplated from the perspective of charity, do not fall into any of these errors. On the contrary, these errors seen so clearly in humanity today and in our seminarians are overcome when human formation is contemplated from its proper end and completion, namely, the relationship of friendship with God that is essentially charity.
At this point, we have all the elements to understand why I propose an integrating role of charity as friendship in human and spiritual priestly formation, because charity inserts us into “an anthropology which is open to the full truth regarding the human person.”[77] Indeed, all of what has been explained thus far finds a beautiful confirmation as well as an important light to go forward in our reflection in the following passage from Redemptor Hominis:
Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ the Redeemer “fully reveals man to himself.” If we may use the expression, this is the human dimension of the mystery of the Redemption. In this dimension man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belong to his humanity. In the mystery of the Redemption man becomes newly “expressed” and, in a way, is newly created. […]. The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly – and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being – he must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into him with all his own self, he must “appropriate” and assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself. If this profound process takes place within him, he then bears fruit not only of adoration of God but also of deep wonder at himself.[78]
When human formation is carried out within the framework of an anthropology which is open to the full truth regarding the human person, human formation must look at Christ and at the priest as man of charity. It must be directed to insert the future priest into the logic of the gift of self that finds its source in God’s love for us. God loved us first, and just as it happened to the woman at the feet of Christ, the forgiveness of our own sins can lead us to fall in love and to stay in love with Christ.[79] We repent and go and sin no more.[80] Human formation must be directed to deepen our relationship of friendship with Jesus, a relationship which we call charity and which Vatican II identifies as essential to spiritual formation.
5. Conclusion
Indeed, the formation of future priests is one of the most demanding and important tasks that the Church must carry out within the context of the New Evangelization. The challenges that we face nowadays in the formation of future priests should not lead us to despair but to hope. The mercy and love of God has called these men in the midst of their brokenness and weakness as He called the first apostles . This same mercy and love will provide for them all the necessary means so that they may fulfill the Father’s will for their lives, if they open their hearts to receive His love and bring to Him in truth their wounds, sins, and weaknesses. In that falling in love with Jesus, they will come to know the Truth who will set them free. Furthermore, they will understand that this communion of love is a life-long project, one that will only be complete when we “go to the house of the Father.”[81]
Understanding communion with Christ as charity and friendship has allowed us to see many important aspects of the interrelation of human and spiritual priestly formation. While human formation is the basis for all formation, spiritual formation is the end and fulfillment of the former. While human formation has as its essence the growth in the human virtues that make our humanity an instrument as well as an ally (and not an obstacle) to carry out God’s will and to love others, spiritual formation has as its core that relationship with the Trinity that serves as a foundation for the identity and activity of future priests. Hence, while human formation is about education in the virtues, spiritual formation consists in growing in charity as friendship with each person of the Trinity as the fulfillment and perfection of those same virtues.
Priests are called to be men of charity. Thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit and supernatural grace, future priests are to grow in a mutual and known benevolence with God that is founded up a communicatio of one’s intimacy, one’s mind, one’s heart, and one’s will. This relationship of charity is nothing but a reciprocal relationship of self-gift, in which the human person finds the truth about himself. Within the logic of this reciprocal self-gift, every human virtue and consequently the entirety of human formation can be understood within the perspective of charity. Moreover, every human virtue must be understood under this perspective if human formation is to reach its true and authentic fulfillment or completion, thereby avoiding a reductionistic anthropology, narcissism, individualism, Pelagianism, and all the lies of our present age. Therefore, this relationship of charity between Christ and the seminarian and the ordained priest inserts us into the logic of the gift of self as the proper theological locus, where we are able to understand charity’s integrating and essential role in the interrelationship between human and spiritual priestly formation.
Endnotes
[1] John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, 2. Henceforth, PDV.
[2] St. John Paul II speaks of a certain “practical atheism.” See PDV, 7.
[3] “In this context special mention should be made of the breakup of the family and an obscuring or distorting of the true meaning of human sexuality. These phenomena have a very negative effect on the education of young people and on their openness to any kind of religious vocation.” PDV, 7.
[4] I have explained this encounter in more detail in my “Faithful Heralds of the Joy of the Gospel of Marriage” Faith Magazine (2014).
[5] Cf. Mt 27:5.
[6] Cf. Mt 26:34, 69-75; Jn 21:17.
[7] Cf. Jn 8:32.
[8] Cf. Jn 14:6.
[9] Cf. Heb 4:15.
[10] Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, ed. John Mortensen and Enrique Alarcon, trans. Laurence Shapcote (Lander: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012), I, q. 21, a. 3, c. Henceforth, ST.
[11] Cf. Mk 3:13-15; PDV, 2.
[12] PDV, 42. Emphasis added.
[13] PDV, 42.
[14] Cf. Eph 5:25.
[15] Cf. 1Jn 4:10.
[16] PDV, 45.
[17] Optatam Totius, 8; PDV 45. Empahsis added.
[18] PDV, 46. Emphasis added.
[19] PDV, 49. Emphasis added.
[20] PDV, 82. Emphasis added.
[21] ST II-II, q. 23, a. 1, c.
[22] Jn 15:4-5.
[23] Cf. Jn 14:6.
[24] Cf. Ga 4:6.
[25] Jn 15:10.
[26] Jn 15:15.
[27] Jn 15:14.
[28] This Thomistic definition of friendship is taken from Jacobus Ramírez, De Caritate: In II-II Summae Theologiae Divi Thomae Expositio (QQ. XXIII-XLIV), vol. 12, Opera Omnia (Salamanca: Editorial San Esteban, 1998)., n. 10, pp. 38-39.
[29] Cf. Jn 10:14.
[30] Cf. Lk 17:10.
[31] Cf. Rm 11:35.
[32] Cf. 1Thess 4:3.
[33] Cf. Jn 10:10.
[34] Cf. Jn 3:16-17.
[35] Cf. Rm 5:8-9.
[36] Cf. 1Jn 3:16.
[37] Gal 2:20.
[38] ST II-II, q. 132, a. 1, c: “gloria claritatem quandam significat, unde glorificari idem est quod clarificari.”
[39] Since the love of benevolence is not reduced to sheer utility or pleasure but it actually integrates them, it can also be said that even if God does not need us simpliciter, He needs us secundum quid. We are useful to Him under a certain aspect (cf. 2Tm 2:21), just as He is useful to us when we love Him with benevolence (cf. Tit 3:7-8; Wis 8:16). Similarly, we can make a case for pleasure. Men who love God with benevolence delight in Him (cf. Psal 33:9); they rejoice in Him (Phi 4:4). And God Himself is also well-pleased in those who love Him. See Prov 8:31; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles: Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fidei Contra Errores Infidelium. Edited by P. Marc, C. Pera, P. Caramello. Vol. 2-3. Taurini-Rome: Marietti, 1961), IV. 22, Henceforth SCG.
[40] Cf. Jn 15:13.
[41] Phil 1:21.
[42] Cf. Rm 14:7-8.
[43] Song 2:16.
[44] Cf. Eph 3:6; Jn 14: 23; 1Jn 4:16.
[45] Cf. 1Cor 1:9.
[46] Cf. Jn15:15.
[47] Cf. Mk 4:11.
[48] Cf. Col 3:3.
[49] Cf. 1Cor 2:16.
[50] Eph 5:25.
[51] ST I, q. 38, a. 2, c: “Donum proprie est datio irreddibilis, secundum philosophum, idest quod non datur intentione retributionis, et sic importat gratuitam donationem.”
[52] ST I, q. 38, a. 2, c: “Ratio autem gratuitae donationis est amor, ideo enim damus gratis alicui aliquid, quia volumus ei bonum. Primum ergo quod damus ei, est amor quo volumus ei bonum. Unde manifestum est quod amor habet rationem primi doni, per quod omnia dona gratuita donantur.” Elsewhere Aquinas explains: “Donum enim, ut dicit philosophus, est datio irreddibilis, non quae recompensari non valeat, sed illa quae recompensationem non quaerit. Unde donum importat liberalitatem in dante. Item quantum ad modum significandi: quia donum importat aptitudinem ad dandum; datum autem importat dationem in actu.” Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum Super Libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi Episcopi Parisiensis, edited by M. F. Moos. Vol 3 (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1956). Henceforth, In Sent. The text here referenced is from In I Sent., d. 18, q. 1, a. 2, c.
[53] “[U]nusquisque dicitur dare amorem suum alicui cum eum amare incipit” SCG IV. 23.
[54] Thomas Aquinas, Super Evangelium S. Ioannis Lectura, edited by R. Cai (Taurini-Rome: Marietti, 1972), cap. 15, lect. 4 [2036].
[55] Thomas Aquinas, De perfectione spiritualis vitae. Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, t. 41 B (Ad Sanctae Sabinae, Romae, 1969), cap. 10: “Nihil autem est homini amabilius libertate propriae voluntatis. Per hanc enim homo est et aliorum dominus, per hanc aliis uti vel frui potest, per hanc etiam suis actibus dominatur.”
[56] Cf. Ceslas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, ed. J. Ernest, Vol. II (Massachussets: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 578-579.
[57] PDV, 45.
[58] Cf. Gaudium et Spes, 22.
[59] Cf. Ibid., 24.
[60] Cf. ST I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2.
[61] Cf. PDV, 45.
[62] Cf. Optatam Totius, 8; PDV 45-46.
[63] Thomas Aquinas, In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1, c: “Traductionem et promotionem usque ad perfectum statum hominis inquantum homo est, qui est virtutis status.”
[64] Cf. ST I-II, q. 65, a. 2, c.
[65] Augustine, Of the Morals of the Catholic Church, 15, 25.
[66] Ibid., 15, 25.
[67] Cf. ST I-II, q. 60, a. 1, c.
[68] Cf. ST II-II, q. 23, a. 8, c.
[69] Cf. ST I-II, q. 109, aa. 2, 8, & 9, c.
[70] PDV, 43. Emphasis added. Note how that the usage of the word education resonates perfectly with the classic definition offered by Aquinas above. Cf. In IV Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1, c.
[71] PDV, 45.
[72] This perspective invites us to describe affective maturity under the light of charity by appealing to St. John of the Cross’s explanation on the meaning of loving God with all of our strength. According to the Spanish Mystic, “The strength of the soul comprises the faculties, passions, and appetites. All this strength is ruled by the will. When the will directs these faculties, passions, appetites toward God, turning away from all that is not God, the soul preserves its strength for God, and comes to love him with all its might.” John of the Cross, The Ascent of the Mount Carmel, III. 16, 2. I will follow here the following edition: John of the Cross, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington: ICS Publications, 1991). This is the true and responsible freedom that John of the Cross so beautifully describes as follows: “All the sovereignty and freedom of the world compared to the freedom and sovereignty of the Spirit of God is utter slavery, anguish, and captivity. Those, then, who are attached to prelacies or to other such dignities and to freedom of their appetites will be considered and treated by God as base slaves and captives, not as offspring […]. Thus they will be unable to reach the royal freedom of spirit attained in divine union, for freedom has nothing to do with slavery. And freedom cannot abide in a heart dominated by desires, in a slave’s heart. It abides in a liberated heart, in a child’s heart.” John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, I, 4, 6.
[73] Cf. Jn 8:32.
[74] ST II-II, q. 183, a. 4, c.
[75] Karol Wojtywa, The Acting Person, ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Pub. Co., 1979), 154. I have altered the English translationof this passage in view of the original text. See Karol Wojtywa, Osoba i Czyn-Persona e Atto, ed. Tadeusz Styczen (Santarcangelo: Rusconi Libri, 1999), 330.
[76] Cf. Ga 5:1; Rom 8:21.
[77] PDV, 45.
[78] John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 10. Emphasis added.
[79] Cf. 1Jn 4:10; Lk 7:47.
[80] Cf. Jn 8: 11.
[81] These were the last words of St. John Paul II. For an account and explanation of these words see Stanislaw Dziwisz, Let Me Go to My Father’s House: John Paul II’s Strenght in Weakness (Saint Paul: Pauline Books & Media, 2006).
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