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Inner Life of a Catholic

The Profession of Faith 

CHAPTER FOUR

Man's Life In Himself

2. Its Characteristics

If this is the ideal of the perfect man, as Jesus Christ our Lord has revealed it to us, and as Christendom, in spirit at least, has always accepted it, it may be well for practical purposes, that we try to see how it affects actual life, to examine more closely its essential features. St. Thomas Aquinas sums these up for us in a single sentence: "The perfection of Christian life," he says, "consists intrinsically and essentially in love, primarily in love towards God, secondarily in love towards our neighbor."

In this sentence, and in others like it frequently recurring in his works, the Angelic Doctor assumes, as a fact so self-evident that it needs no further consideration, that the perfect man, as the Christian understands him, is built entirely on charity; that without charity nothing else will produce him, not all the gifts of nature, nor all the training in the schools, nor all the virtues, nor all the successes in the world; that with it in perfection everything else will follow. By charity, as he here and elsewhere explains it, he means in the first place the love of God. God is to him the Great Reality, the one Being who contains in Himself all that is lovable, who has proved His love in wondrous ways, who is worthy of all love in return. To give back to God that love, in gratitude if for nothing else, to grow in appreciation, first of all that He has done and then of all that He is, and in consequence to love Him yet more; in the end to be devoured with that love, so that nothing else may come between man and this one object of affection, that to St. Thomas, and to all the saints who have filled the world's history with glory, is the first foundation of the truly perfect man.

But secondarily, as he says, and not independent of the first, he puts the love of man for his fellow-men. He does not see the two apart; the one is a sequel of the other. If the love of God exists then the love of man must follow, not only as a fruit of the tree, but as its direct, indeed its most direct manifestation. St. John gives the same to us in his own forcible way: "Let us therefore love God, because he hath first loved us. If any man say I love God and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not? And this commandment we have from God, that he who loveth God love also his brother" (I John iv, 19-21).

St. Paul likewise sums up his teaching: "Be ye therefore followers of God, as most dear children. And walk in love as Christ also hath loved us, and hath delivered himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odor of sweetness" (Eph. v, 1-2).

When we speak of love in reference to God, and of that, as the commandment says, "with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength"; and when we speak of the love of our fellow-men "even as we love ourselves"; clearly the word love must be taken in a sense far transcending that of ordinary speech. On this account St. Paul preferred to use the word "charity" to "love"; in his time, as in ours, the common word had been so corrupted, so alloyed, so debased, that it no longer expressed the pure golden thing of which he wished to speak. Not that his charity would in any way destroy the love of nature; on the contrary, the charity of Jesus Christ perfects the love of man, it raises it to a higher order, it stimulates it by yet nobler motives, it opens out to it further and finer methods of expression. It defends natural love, essentially good and true in itself, from any of that danger which must always beset what is merely natural; it stirs depths of love which, from natural motives only, would never have been stirred at all.

For the God whom we love is not merely some abstract Deity, distant from us and apart; He is not only the God whom reason can discover, supreme, independent, the All-Master. He is the God made known to us by revelation, the God of the Blessed Trinity, and the Blessed Trinity is the expression of God's essential love, His essential life of love, how He "is love" itself. He is the God whom we call Father, with all that the word implies, because, as He would have us think of Him, so He is towards us. He is the God whom we call Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate, the proof of the Father's love, the proof of human love made divine. He is the God whom we call the Holy Ghost, love personified. We love God, therefore, not only because of what reason teaches us, though that alone would be a deep foundation for gratitude, and affection, and generosity; we love Him, much more, so much more that the first is swallowed up, because by faith we know Him to be infinitely good, infinitely lovable, infinitely all-absorbing, yet at the same time infinitely condescending to such as we, stooping down to us and pleading, just that, and only that, He may have our love in return. We love Him, moreover, with more than our little human love; we love Him with a love made perfect, made divine, made worthy so that even He may deign to accept it, because it is united with love of Jesus Christ our Lord Himself. It passes through His heart, it is helped by the grace which He Himself has given to us, that we may love the more and the better.

This love for God is no sentimental thing, it is no mere matter of the feelings of emotions, no subtle self-satisfaction. We have only to look at the lives of those who have been most fired by it, of those who, literally, have fallen in love with their All-beloved, to realize the strong, devouring, self-annihilating passion it is. It is true man must always remain man, so long as he walks on this earth, with a body as well as a soul. In consequence his noblest and most selfless affections will seldom be without emotion of some kind; even the saint, whose love has made him give his all, and has asked for nothing in return, pleads later that he may know his Lover's love given back to him in mutual affection. Nevertheless, emotion, enjoyment of love if we may so call it, is no true test of love in any order, much less is it a condition, or test, or proof of a man's love for God The essence of love does not require it. Rather, in every degree, love is devotedness; it is best proved by a will to give, a joy in giving, because of Him to whom we give. In our love of God it is no different; to Him love gladly gives its all, if need be even itself, entirely for Him and for His greater glory, preferring His good pleasure to its own, indeed to that of any creature whatsoever.

Such, in its object, its source, and its manifestation, is the Christian's love for the God who has so wonderfully shown Himself to him; the same, in due proportion, is to be said of his love for his fellow-men. To the Christian, as we have already had occasion often enough to see, his fellow-man is much more than just his fellow-man; whoever he may be he is the image of God, made unto God's own likeness, a reflection of His divine perfections, capable of reflecting them ever more and more. He is a dwelling-place of God, or, even at his worst, he is one in whom God longs to dwell; in God, and with God in him, he is capable of all manner of development of beauty, of love. To love him is to love Jesus Christ Himself; to serve him, is to do a service to Him who is worthy of all service. On this account in the first place, for the love of God more than for the love of man himself, or rather because the one has absorbed, and transformed, and supernaturalised the other, is a Christian's love poured out upon his neighbor. He sees in him one that is so precious, that he has been bought by God Himself, at the price of the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ. He loves him with that mark of true love, with that longing that would have the best for the beloved; and that is not only his good, and prosperity, and happiness here on earth, but also his supernatural good, the perfection of the life within him, his eternal well-being and happiness. Thus is the love of man a true reflection of the love of God. There are not two loves, two virtues of charity, one for God and one for men; there is one, which embraces both, God for His own sake, and our fellow-men, indeed all creation in its degree, because of themselves as they are seen with the eyes of God.

But if the essence of perfection in a man is founded on this love of God and of his fellow-man, it follows that the way to perfection must, of all things, run along the line of this love. The soul that would be perfect must love much; it must let itself be led by love; it must love generously and intensely with a love that is true, that is pure, selfless, disinterested. Self-seeking love is not love; true love is measured by its opposite. Nor will true love be fulfilled or satisfied by a mere act of charity, with whatever fervor that act, in word or in deed, may be performed. "If I should distribute all my goods to the poor, and I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing" (I Cor. xiii, 3). Love goes beyond mere acts, acts are no more than the offshoots of love, signs of its life but nothing else. For indeed love is a life and a living; it permeates all we are, all we do; it is a way of thinking, a way of feeling, a way of willing; we love and at once the object loved stands before us in other colors, more real, more beautiful, more longed for as our own, more to be served with all we have and are. When we love we live, no, not we, but the Beloved lives in us. Every act we perform becomes a fulfillment of His will, not our own; we live to please Him, not ourselves, in every moment of our being we express our love for Him whom we love above all. Hence it comes about that everything we do, our whole lives and every trifling action in them, may be transformed into one unceasing act of love, thereby making towards the framing of the perfect man; and that progress will be more real in proportion as the love is more intense, more selflessly generous, more energetic, more constant. What is of account in the eyes of Him we love is not the act itself we give to Him; in itself what can any act of puny man be to God Almighty? It is rather the will with which it is done and offered, it is the effort of love that it proves, independently of self, of all one's own consolation, or satisfaction, or reward.

And the same, as we have said, in its degree, is the character of Christian love for its fellow-man. For since this love is one with the love of God, to show it in any true way for another is to show it to God Himself. "As often as ye did it to the least of these you did it to me." Indeed, as the lives of the great lovers of God clearly show, the love of God is often best and most easily manifested by the love of men about us; love of God, where it is abundant, easily, necessarily, overflows on them. Love of God, seeing in its fellow-man a reflection of God Himself; seeing in him Jesus Christ, its Lord and Beloved; on that account it runs to serve him, it gives itself for him, and that with the same intensity and energy that it would serve Christ our Lord. It matters not to a Little Sister of the Poor that the old man she serves and cares for is an utter stranger to her, is perhaps ungrateful and a trial, is loathsome and diseased. He is loved by Jesus Christ, he has the likeness of Christ somewhere about him, to serve him is to serve her Beloved, and she is more than content. Nor does it matter to the missionary that his message is set aside by the wise and prudent, that he must preach the good tidings only to the outcast, the untouchable, the refuse of mankind. In him no less than in another is the image of Jesus Christ; he too, is capable of the love of God as is the most meticulous of men; in him the servant sees the Master, and it is enough. Such love is the making of the perfect man as the Catholic understands the word, even when measured by the standards of life here on earth.

But human life on earth is not in itself a perfect state. We have already seen elsewhere that even regenerated man is left with his tendencies to evil; there is a law in his members, as the Apostle says, which draws him continually to do the evil he would not. In other words there is in man another kind of love, at variance with the kind of love of which we have just spoken. In heaven we shall be free and untrammeled; there we shall love even as we are loved, without any need of safeguards. But here on earth, as experience proves to us every day, it is quite otherwise. In our present state of fallen nature it is not possible to love with a true and effective love without sacrifice; without, that is, the suppression of a lower love which interferes and demands its own. Much more is this true when we speak of the love of God. Being human, with human aspirations and human inclinations towards the things that belong to this life only, we cannot love God wholly without a struggle, without a surrender of some kind. The lower self must be kept down; love that is illicit must be excluded; from the first dawn of reason until our last breath the contest will always go on. It is true the battle is not continuous; there are moments of respite for every one, there are habits formed which make the contest easy and almost connatural. Nevertheless the man who would be perfect can never wholly lay aside his arms, he needs to be always prepared. This is the meaning of that asceticism which belongs to all Christian teaching. It is not a notion of cruelty, it is not fanaticism, it is not unnatural; it is the generous pursuit of an ideal which would push aside all else that comes in its way. It is a recognition of the glory of man, and of the grandeur of human life; but at the same time the price that must be paid if that glory and grandeur are to be attained.