Sep 03 – Homily – Fr Dominic: Charity Begins at Home
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Homily #120903 (
04min) Play- Today's Gospel reminds us how we have to act in our home and in our home town. How we need to sanctify ourselves in our homes. We need to practice charity in our homes. To be Saints with those we live with.Ave Maria!
Mass: Ordinary Form - St. Gregory the Great - Memorial
Readings: Monday in the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: 1Corinthians 2:1-5
Responsorial Psalm: 119:97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102
Gospel: Luke 4:16-30
Audio (MP3)+++
The love that is charity.
“It is crucial for the devout Christian striving for the perfection of charity to be correctly informed on the precise nature of the love that is charity. The simplest way to answer the question is to state, with St Thomas Aquinas, that the theological virtue of charity is “friendship”. What he means is that this infused supernatural virtue operates through a type of love that constitutes friendship, a love that wishes well to another person. It is a mutual benevolent love. Now, it is in this context that Jesus said to his Apostles: “I have not called you servants, but friends: (Jn 15:5). Therefore, the love that is the bond of this relationship and communication of friendship is the love that is charity.
The friendship love that is charity is not only a virtue; it is the most excellent of all the virtues, as St Paul says: “So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love: (1 Cor 13:13). In fact, there can be no perfect Christian virtue without charity, as St Paul also teaches: “If I should distribute all my goods to the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profits me nothing” (1 Cor 13:3).
Since charity is love, and love is the source of all our actions, whatever the Christian does should be motivated by charity. The greatest challenge and the most common source of failure is in the area of self-centered love. Our fallen human nature is so prone to seek self that St Alphonsis Liguori is reputed to have said that the struggle against selfish love does not end until a few hours after death.” ….
taken from “Jesus Living in Mary” ~ A Handbook of the Spirituality of St Louis de Montfort
Ave Maria!