Life in Solitude with God

Charity

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“What is Charity? A supernatural habit of the mind whereby we love God above all things for His own sake, and ourselves and our neighbor for Him. It is a theological virtue [like Faith and Hope], but higher than they, and the only *eternal* one of the three. Faith and Hope will take us as far as the threshold of eternity, but when we actually enter it, they will have fallen away. Only of Charity St. Paul has said: ‘Charity never falleth away, never dies’; it is eternal, like God Himself, like the Holy Spirit Who pours it into our hearts; and of such surpassing excellence that only the Divine Spirit can infuse it; of a quality that no human force or even the strength of the Seraphim, the spirits of love, can impart to us.” ~Fr. Escribano

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“Even supposing --an impossible supposition, of course-- that every virtue were enshrined in my soul, my whole existence a most fertile soil and limitless source of heroism, if I lack Charity, “nihil mihi prodest, nihil sum”; it would avail me nothing, I should count for nothing (Cor. xiii, 3). Charity is necessary --necessitate medii-- for my justification and salvation. Who does not love God is in sin.... Whoever appears before the Judgment-seat of God without the cloth-of-gold garment of divine love will have his part and lot with the hypocrites in the unquenchable fire.” ~Fr. Escribano

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“O God, let the solemn, imperative, and burning proclamation which accompanied the issuing of the great precept of love on Mount Sinai serve to impel my entry into the Kingdom of those that love Thee: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength and with thy whole mind’ (Deut. vi, 5)... ‘for this is the greatest and the first commandment’ (Matt. xxii, 37).” ~Fr. Escribano

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“The act of least outward significance, for instance, to give someone a drink of water, if done out of supernatural charity is of greater value in the sight of the Supreme Judge than the tortures of a St. Laurence if endured without Charity.” ~Fr. Escribano

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“...Because it is so necessary to love [to have Charity] in man’s life, God has imposed it upon him as a precept... and has placed it at the head of His commandments... and He has even summarized in it all the other (precepts). He who loves, keeps already all the other commandments.” ~Fr. Villar

Traditional Catholicism

“There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilisation. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern when compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin, and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in the New World have more than compensated for what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the vast countries which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn, countries which a century hence, may not improbably contain a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. The members of her communion are certainly not fewer than a hundred and fifty millions; and it will be difficult to show that all other Christian sects united amount to a hundred and twenty millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.”

~Thomas Babington Macaulay