Ave Maria Meditations
Charity is not arrogant or rude: many of the temptations against charity can be summarized as attitudes of pride toward our neighbor. We can only serve others and concern ourselves about them to the extent that we forget about ourselves. Without humility no other virtue can exist and in particular there can be no love. In many cases, faults against charity have been preceded by faults involving vanity and pride, selfishness and a desire to outdo other people. The pride that prevents us from living charity can manifest itself in many ways.
Love is not ambitious: it does not insist on getting its own way. Charity does not ask anything for itself. It knows that it loves Jesus and others, and that is sufficient for it. Not only is it not ambitious with an overriding desire for gain, but it does not even insist on it’s own way; it seeks Christ.
Love does not rejoice at wrong: it does not compile lists of personal grievances. It endures all things. We should not only ask God to help us find excuses for the speck that we may see in our neighbor’s eye, but we should be sorry about the beam in our own eye, about the many times we have been unfaithful to our God.
