Charity is not something we ourselves build up. It invades us along with God's grace, 'because he has loved us first'. We would do well to fill, to saturate ourselves with this most beautiful truth: 'If we are able to love God, it is because we have been loved by God.' You and I are able to lavish affection upon those around us, because we have been born to the Faith, through the Father's love for us. Ask God boldly for this treasure, for the supernatural virtue of charity, so that you may practise it even in the smallest details.

Too often we Christians have not known how to correspond to this gift. At times we have debased it, as if it could be confined to a soulless and cold almsgiving; or we have reduced it to more or less stereotyped good works. This distortion of charity was well expressed once by a sick woman when she commented with sad resignation, 'Yes, they treat me with "charity" here, but my mother used to look after me with affection.' A love that springs from the Heart of Christ could never countenance such distinctions.

In order that you might grasp this truth very clearly, I have preached on countless occasions that we do not have one heart to love God with and another with which to love men. This poor heart of ours, made of flesh, loves with an affection which is human and which, if it is united to Christ's love, is also supernatural. This, and no other, is the charity we have to cultivate in our souls, a charity which will lead us to discover in others the image of Our Lord.