Ave Maria Meditations
Faith, Hope, and Charity
“And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.” (1 Cor. 13: 13).
For St. Paul life was Christ, a life of faith in the Son of God. Death was gain, a passing in joyful hope from this earthly habitation to the blessedness of Heaven. Both in life and death he belonged to God and was motivated solely by love of God and neighbor. Faith, hope and charity were the source of his unparalleled zeal for souls. These theological virtues, poured into the soul by the Holy Spirit, practiced heroically by ones generous response, and ordered to union with God, are the foundation for any authentic and fruitful missionary zeal.
In the first instance, it is the primary duty of the apostle, prophet, teacher, miracle worker, healer, etc., to evangelize by his life. How accurate and sobering it is to say, ‘My life is the word I preach’. If Christ is our life, if we are in Christ Jesus, then our word is the Word who dwells in our hearts through faith (cf. Eph. 3: 17). If not, then “I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal … I am nothing … “ and my words and actions “profiteth me nothing” (cf. I Cor. 13:1-3); my ministry is void. Men such as this are “lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasures more than of God: having an appearance indeed of godliness, but denying the power thereof … Ever learning, and never attaining to the knowledge of truth” (II Tim. 3:2-7). Our Saint exhorts Timothy, and in him all missionaries, to be “vigilant, labor in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill thy ministry. Be sober” (II TIm. 4:5).
The invitation to lead lives of prayer, silence, and suffering comes directly from the Heart of our Blessed Savior. It is He who earnestly desires us to be vigilant in practicing and proclaiming the life of virtue. Thus, when our intellect encounters suffering, it is stupefied by the mystery. It must exercise the virtue of supernatural faith in accepting and offering the variety of sacrifices so necessary for the vitality of the Church’s mission to save souls from eternal damnation. Without faith in Jesus Crucified we become “enemies of the Cross of Christ” (Phil. 3:18). Without faith we cannot accept the joy of sacrifice to which Christ deigns to calls us. Without faith we become overwhelmed by the suffering which is sent to us and instead of rejoicing always with gratitude at our little portion of the Cross, we become grumblers, irritated ourselves and irritable to others. Without faith we lack that ongoing generosity and spirit of self-denial which ought to characterize a follower of the Crucified Lord.
However, with faith we live in profound communion with the Suffering Savior and rejoice to endure all things out of love for God and neighbor. With faith a life penance and mortification is freely embraced as a gift from God and, in turn, frees us to embrace a sinful world with the infinite love of God. With divine faith our thoughts, our words, our actions become fountains of divine grace in an arid world of sin and death. Ultimately our faith, our assent to revealed truth, will give way to the Beatific Vision of Truth Himself. “But he that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved.” (Mt. 10:22).
In our soul there is also the faculty of memory- cognizant of the past, pressing towards the future, and living in the present moment. When the memory is confronted with the sins, failings, and difficulties of the past, the uncertainty of the future, and the responsibility of the present, there is a need for theological hope. Sacred silence is a supreme act of hope which transends this passing world and looks to the Creator of heaven and earth to be ones help now and ones possession in eternal bliss. How frequently the idle word hinders us from our everlasting goal “of the heavenly vocation of[God in Christ Jesus” (Ph. 3:13-14). In a culture saturated with diversion and distraction, it has become more important than ever that we still our tongues, our minds, our bodies, and our hearts in the presence of God. The practice of prolonged moments of recollection, of trustful surrender to divine providence, of curbing out tongues from vain and unnecessary speech, these are efficacious ways to exercise and strengthen our virtue of hope.
Without hope we become addicted to noise and distractions of every kind. Why is this? No one who fails to hope in God can stand silence. In the quiet he is confronted with his need for God, his sinfulness, his emptiness, his boredom. So his soul runs from reality, hoping to hide from the despair and discouragement that so characterize one without hope. This in part explains the diabolical obsession of our modern culture for endless anxiety and nonstop, even deafening, noise.
With hope there is contentment in God alone. With hope there is powerful awareness that we shall literally rise victorious in Christ. With hope one lives, even now, as a citizen of Heaven. The man of hope is serene in simplicity, in silence. He seeks only to be in Christ and to do “the good, and the acceptable, and the perfect will of God” (Rm. 12:2). Ultimately our hope will pass into the permanent possession of God Himself in Heaven.
The highest faculty of the soul is the will. Herein lies our ability to love, and what practice of charity can compare with prayer? Prayer is the supreme act of charity-loving God in pure adoration, acknowledging and repenting of offenses committed against the Creator in contrition, being soliticous for the eternal destiny of others by supplications, and offering everything with gratitude to the Giver of all good things. It is in prayer that we converse with God as our Friend, as our Beloved. It is in prayer that we enter more and more into a communion of life and love with Him. Abiding in Him, we become fruitful and capable of doing all things in Christ who strengthens us (cf. Ph. 4: 13).
Without prayer we will lose our soul – “for without Me you can do nothing.” (Jn. 15:5). It is infallibly true that if our lives are not rooted in Christ we will live for ourselves. The charity of prayer infinitely surpasses the emptiness of ‘nice guy philanthropy’ divorced from God. When push comes to shove, the man of deep prayer will endure long-suffering and even lay down his life for the love of God and the salvation of souls. Whereas the politically correct person, on the other hand, will scarcely be found if he must sacrifice all. He is like the rich young man in the Gospel who appears to be virtuous from youth, but when the moment comes to follow Christ at all costs his charity vanishes like morning mist in the heat of sun.
The man of prayer and contemplation bears all things patiently, even joyfully. His is the life of the virtues and the beatitudes. He turns to Divine Love with all his being in an upward, inward surge of the mind and heart. He seeks constant prayer, uninterrupted dialogue, incessant union with the Almighty. His words and actions radiate Christ and set souls ablaze with the consuming fire of divine charity. The man of prayer emulates the great Saints, like St. Paul, in their efficacious zeal and labor for souls. In the end, charity is elevated, absorbed as it were in Him who is Charity.
If we love God and our neighbor for His sake, we shall be found worthy of eternal rewards beyond measure. If, however, we lack this charity in our souls, that is, if we are in that most dreadful state of mortal sin, then the inextinguishable flames and the worm that dieth not shall be our endless punishment. “He that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is Charity.” (I Jn. 4:8).
used with permission of Friar M.M. De Cruce, FI (In Pursuit of Immortal Souls: Meditations on the Role of Redemptive Suffering, Silence, and Prayer in the Missions)
