Despair is the deliberate refusal to trust that God will give the necessary help we need to save our soul. We will not fall into despair if we remember how much God loves us. Presumption is a foolish expectation of salvation without using the proper means to obtain it. We cannot allow ourselves to commit the sin of presumption since God wants us to use the means of salvation He has given us. Each of us should hope, with the grace of God, to preserve to the end. We should hope to gain the joys of heaven, as God’s eternal reward to us. We should ask for the grace to accomplish good works which will deserve that reward. We should pray that God will merciful to all and bring everyone to heaven. Faith and Hope will cease, for we cannot believe what we see, and we cannot desire and hope for what we already have. Charity will remain even in Heaven, since we will love God whom we possess.
An Act of Hope
O my God, relying on Your infinite goodness and promises, I hope to obtain pardon of my sins, the help of your grace, and life everlasting, through the merits of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Redeemer.
The Virtue of Charity
Charity is the virtue by which we love God above all things for His own sake and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of Him. Charity is the form of all the virtues, that is, it makes them alive and binds them together in perfect harmony.
Charity completes and Perfects Faith and Hope
Charity unites us to God most perfectly with a supernatural love. In the virtue of Charity we are united first of all to God and also to our neighbor. Our neighbor includes all living persons, even those who hate us. Charity achieves the work of bringing us who live on earth nearer to God, while we await the possession of Him in Heaven. Charity completes and perfects faith and hope; it makes us experience a real trust in God. We prefer God to all things and we try to manifest towards Him this trust and preference by observing His will.
Like the Virtues of Faith and Hope, Charity is an Infused Virtue
Charity is given with sanctifying grace. When God gives us the infused virtue of Charity, He gives us the means to make acts of perfect love, and the power to make these acts easily. We should frequently make acts of love, and open our hearts to God as friend to friend in intimate conversation. To love God above all things, we must be willing to renounce all created goods rather than to offend God by mortal sin. It is not necessary that we have feelings of emotion in our love of God, since love is essentially a matter of the will and not of the feelings. We return God’s love by making acts of love, by promoting in ourselves and others in appreciation of His goodness, and striving to live for Him.
The New Commandment:
“Love one Another as I Have Loved You.”
By loving His own to the end, Jesus makes manifest the Father’s love for us. By loving one another, the disciples imitate the love of Jesus. Jesus said: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you, abide in my love.” And again: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (Jn. 15:9,12) Christ died for love of us while we were still His enemies because of sin. The Lord asks us to love as He does. Saint Paul gives us a description of love.
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of Angels and have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burnt, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things.”
Charity Brings Joy and Peace
It is the source and goal of the Christian Life. Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love. The practice of the moral life animated by charity gives to the Christian the spiritual freedom of the children of God. The believer no longer stands before God as a slave, in sterile fear, or as a mercenary, looking for wages, but as a son, responding to the love of Him who “first loved us.” (Jn.4:19) The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy.
“The companion of faith is hope; it is necessary because we do not see what we believe; with hope we are not overcome by faint-heartedness in the waiting; then charity comes and places in our souls the hunger and thirst for God and makes our aspirations soar up to Him.” St. Augustine
An Act of Love
O my God, I love you above all things with my whole heart and soul, because You are all good and worthy of all love. I love my neighbor as myself for the love of You. I forgive all who have injured me and beg pardon of all whom I have injured.
