The following thoughts were assembled as an aid for reflection and dialogue with the prisoners involved in the Catholic RCIA program at the Preston Smith State Prison near Lamesa, Texas. Prison is a place where men and women have time and opportunity to reflect on their lives, on the mistakes they have made, on the need to be forgiven … and in turn to forgive many old trespasses against them that may have contributed to their life of crime. My wife and I have discovered that many prisoners do indeed take the opportunity to reflect when encouraged to do so. Their reflections are often penetrating and painfully honest. The plight of prisoners is no different from the plight of all of us who are imprisoned by our sins: we have to stretch ourselves to grow spiritually and get to know our Lord with true intimacy.
Anthony de Mello offers the spiritual metaphor of the vanishing ladder. Any authentic lift of the human spirit toward the Father involves a necessary willingness to climb a steep ladder of spirituality. We cannot know why such a decision is made at one point in our lives rather than at another. Some of us may climb to escape the experience of evil up close and personal. For others the spiritual climb may begin when the prospect of death becomes more an approaching fact than a remote event. Yet again, simply the accumulating of wisdom with age is enough to help some people see the truth that finally will set them free.
Those who have not begun to climb the ladder cannot see either the world or God from the same perspective as those who have climbed at least part of the way. The spiritual climb of the inner self is mocked by unbelievers. But even the climbers may be startled by the rarefied atmosphere they have entered as each rung of the ladder they step above falls away into an abyss. There is no going back. Down below, a gaping and black hole awaits our fall.
So true it is that many choose not to climb the ladder. It is too exhausting and risky to give up what we have become for what we might become. Perhaps some of the aphorisms on spirituality which follow, concerned as they are with prayer, hope, faith, and charity, will have seemed worth the effort to ponder.
Prayer
1
St. Josemaria Escriva was on the mark when he said prayer first, everything else second, third, and so forth. There can be no atonement, no works, no evidence of love for God and others without the spoken words. Without prayer we are merely puffed up with lies and self-deceit, and all of the so-called “good” we do is only so that others will think us better than we really are.
2
Imagine truly loving another person yet not wanting to spend hours a day communing with that person. How could that be love? So if we are not praying, we ought to admit to ourselves that we are not yet in love with our Lord. And why is that? Why do we want to fool ourselves that we are in love with our Lord?
3
Prayer cannot be taken away from us. Our Lord arranged it that way. Our property can be seized. We can be imprisoned. We can be denied the sacraments. We can be isolated from all human contact. But our desires and our thoughts and our conversations with the Father cannot be taken away from us. We can only give them up of our own accord because we are weary and tempted to despair.
4
Pity the old ones who will not pray. They have not found the proverbial wisdom that comes with age. They stand before eternity not with hands outstretched in gratitude and welcome, but with clenched fists still hot from old anger and fear.
5
Thomas Fuller said that we do not pray well if we do not live well. But how can we live well if we do not pray well? The key to doing anything well is to have the right disposition in our hearts. If we live well and pray well simultaneously … perhaps we will learn to die well.
6
When we set to cleaning out the garage, the attic, and the cellar, we begin to realize how many useless things we own that once we thought we could not live without. So it is with prayer. When we think of how we have trivially spent the many years of our lives, we start to wonder how many priceless treasures of the spirit might have accrued if we had learned to pray sooner and more often. But our regret may be short-lived by imagining the treasures yet to be piled up in the time we have left.
7
Prayer is first of all communion with the Loved One. A prayer speaks words of thanks, or of praise, or very often of request. When we pray words of praise or thanksgiving, we do not expect to hear God’s answering voice. The prayer is a little one-sided; yet, because we have uttered words of praise or thanksgiving, no doubt God takes notice and quietly rains down on us more grace with which to carry on our work and our lives. The prayer of request is another matter. We listen very attentively for a reply. God does not speak in words, but more so in signs and in the direction our life takes after we have prayed for something. As Bishop Fulton Sheen used to say, though we may not detect the fact, “God always answers our prayers … Yes, No, or Wait.”
Yes is the joyful answer for which we have been waiting. And then we reply to God with more prayers of praise and thanksgiving. No is the answer we do not want to hear. The devil may use this No as a way to fill us with doubt that God even exists, for surely if there is a God, the answer should have been Yes. The Lord knows better. The Lord knows that the person has prayed for the wrong thing or in the wrong spirit. The disappointment of the person praying blinds him to God’s wisdom. Jesus showed us how to avoid that mistake. At Gesthemane he prayed three times that the cup of torture he was about to drink might pass from him. Three times he said, “But thy will be done.” And so it was done. Without the Father’s great No to suffering, it would never have been possible for us to hear his great Yes to our salvation.
But the most puzzling answer of all is Wait. Because what we have prayed for is not immediately given, we often do not know that this is the answer … wait! …and we mistakenly confuse Wait with No. It is therefore of the utmost importance that in a prayer of request, we be patient, because God surely knows when to answer our prayers. As St. Basil advised, “The reason why sometimes you have asked and not received, is because you have asked amiss, either inconsistently, or lightly, or because you have asked for what was not good for you, or because you have ceased asking.”
8
About what, then, should we talk to God? As someone has said, God is in the details.” It therefore stands to reason that God wants to hear and talk about the details, not the grand design of things. When at the end of his life the great Thomas Aquinas finished his monumental books on theology, he commented that it all reminded him of straw. And why not? His books, like straw, could be burned and forgotten. It was not the “grand design” of his books that God loved, but rather Thomas himself.
9
The instinct for God is natural, but the knowing of God must be in the seeking, because we have a hidden God. Just as with the scientist, the search for natural law is natural; yet the physical law cannot be known except by struggling to find it. The artist likewise naturally seeks the beautiful, but the beautiful must be discovered only by struggling to sculpt beauty out of a rock or paint it on a canvas or finger it on a keyboard. It is the fatal flaw of atheism that it assumes there is no God because God is not visible. If this principle were acted upon generally, there would be no science or art, because nothing is visible except by drawing ourselves near to the True and the Beautiful and the Good, and struggling to wrench them from their secret hiding places. The atheist will never stop being an atheist until he draws nearer to God with his first prayer. First prayers may be hardly recognizable as such. They might be a mere rumble in the spirit, a radical discontent, a moment of supreme nostalgia for the Father we have abandoned but who never abandons us.
10
Kierkegaard wisely noted that when we pray we should spend a great deal more time listening than speaking. After all, what is it we can tell God that He doesn’t already know?
11
Is prayer a monologue or a dialogue? When we speak to God, does God answer? How do we know when He answers without hearing a voice like our own? If not our language, what language does God use? Dreams? Gifts? Signs? Perhaps signs more than anything, because they are the universal language. We need to become adept at reading those signs, and the first step in that direction is to look for them. At first they may not be evident. But if a sign is repeated, it is because we are so dense that God has to repeat Himself until He is heard.
I asked the Lord once to give me a worthy ministry for my retirement years. Shortly before I retired He sent me a woman who needed a teacher to work with her son while he was in prison. I did so, teaching him literary skills and preparing him for college level courses. After being discharged from prison he ended up in my college classes and has since graduated with honors. He is working on an MBA at a prestigious business college. Louise and I last saw him at Mass.
When I finally retired I still had not picked a ministry. The message had not gotten through. Dim-witted that I am, prison ministry was not even on my short list of chosen ministries. Then one day in a used book store I was perusing the introduction to a biography of one of my heroes, the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain. I had exchanged a few letters with Maritain in my youth when he was teaching at Princeton. Reading on, I discovered with a jolt that his last literary act was to autograph a book for a man recently released from prison. That was enough. My earlier experience with a prisoner had been punctuated yet again by Maritain. I had yet another sign. I had a ministry.
12
In order to keep us away from God, the Devil will put many distractions in the way of our praying. “Noise” is the worst distraction … “noise” for the ears, “noise” for the eyes, “noise” for the hands. To focus on God there must be silence.
13
We sometimes hear people dispute whether it is better to pray alone or in communion with others. Why is this even debated? God is present in all places and listening for all He is worth.
14
No one can object that it is a good habit to pray when we are in need. Yet it must be a bad habit if that is the only time we pray.
15
The more often we pray, the more often we need to pray. Some people will never kick the habit.
16
Yes, prayers are words made up of the letters of the alphabet. But prayers are also insensible and soundless yearnings of the heart … for which words are mostly useless. At such moments, music may come to the rescue. What did Augustine say? “He who sings prays twice!” … with the head and the heart.
17
“He prays best who loves best.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge
18
The insight of Saint Basil is worth repeating: “The reason why sometimes you have asked and not received, is because you have asked amiss, either inconsistently, or lightly, or because you have asked for what was not good for you, or because you have ceased asking.”
19
Kierkegaard wisely noted that when we pray we should spend a great deal more time listening than speaking. After all, what is it we can tell God that He doesn’t already know?
20
Jesus hides his body and blood in the bread and the wine. Then he enters us and we are the Body of Christ. What is the great prayer for that moment? It is simple and unforgettable. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”
21
Too often we pray for gifts from God. What about praying for gifts to God?
22
Those old enough to remember know that before prayer in the public schools of America was abolished, there was never any occasion for students to be killing other students. Today it hardly seems possible that a day can pass without some great scandal of homicide or rape in our public schools. Is it mere coincidence that the abolition of God is simultaneous with the present chaos?
23
Any minute of any day it would hardly be difficult to say the greatest prayer of all from our hearts, our thoughts, and our lips: “Thy will be done!”
Faith
24
“We give thanks to God always for all of you, remembering you in our prayers, unceasingly calling to mind your work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father …”
1 Thessalonians, Chapter 1
25
“There is no love without hope, no hope without love, and neither hope nor love without faith.” Saint Augustine
26
No man ever lived who did not have faith in something or someone. It is in our very nature to believe in a thing we cannot prove for certain, such as a new invention we are trying to create, a hero to save us who has not yet arrived, or a woman’s unconditional and undying love. Anyone who says he believes in nothing is a liar, for at least he believes without proof that nothing is believable,
27
True faith in God may wobble from time to time, but it does not fall. True faith brings strength and endurance. The godless Nazi faith survived barely a quarter of a century. Godless Soviet communism lasted longer, but came and went in the same century. Faith in Christ is 2,000 years young.
28
A thousand years ago human flight to the moon would have been considered preposterous by skeptical thinkers. Yet how do we know that at that very moment the Holy Spirit did not plant the seed of faith and guide the imagination and reason of men toward the great event? May we suspect that every doubting Thomas will someday take the first step toward religious faith?
29
If it is true that faith will move mountains, it is surely just as true that faith does not have to move all those mountains all at once.
30
Faith is not true faith without works. We can think of faith as the pillar of salvation. But the pillar’s foundation is love. Faith without love is a monumental lie for the simple reason that the two great commandments of Jesus are to love God and our neighbor as we love ourselves. Works are the expression of that love as Jesus declares in Matthew 25. If we do not love, we have no faith.
31
Pearl Buck said she had no need for faith other than her faith in human beings. This is an easy faith, all too easily challenged by the presence of local monsters. The actor Humphrey Bogart’s young son prayed that his father would survive the cancer that was consuming him. When Bogart died, his son made God out to be the monster. The boy’s intelligence did not fathom that the real monsters were alcohol and cigarettes … Bogart’s local monsters. It was the boy’s father who had failed him, not God.
32
The atheist H.L. Mencken defined faith as the illogical belief in the improbable. But who can say for certain which belief in the improbable is logical or illogical? Democritus pondered whether atoms might exist, things so small the eye could not sense them. His contemporaries scorned him as illogical. When Mencken said God could not exist because men could not see Him, it evidently did not occur to him that Men cannot see Him because he is too large to be seen.
33
Voltaire opined that to believe in the impossible is to lie to oneself. The apostle Thomas perhaps thought as much when the other apostles told him they had seen the risen Christ. He believed the other apostles had lied to themselves, or were lying to him. Then Jesus appeared to Thomas … perhaps to prove that it was he who had lied to himself. What is difficult to understand is how it came to pass that Thomas could have had so little faith in his fellow apostles. This is what the enemies of our faith cannot explain convincingly … how twelve men who passed on the Gospels to the world could have duped themselves.
34
Thomas Jefferson was another doubting Thomas. Not a Catholic, he called himself a Christian. The troubling part for him was the miracles, in which he could not believe. But he took it as a sign that since there were so many people of faith all around the world, belief in Someone you could not see or prove to exist was rational. (See Jefferson’s letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823) Today some scientists are catching up with Jefferson and are pondering whether the universal attraction of religion is evidence that the human psyche is hard-wired to believe in God. And for Christians, why wouldn’t it be so? As the old Baltimore Catechism put it: “God made us to know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.”
35
Saint Anselm said, “I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand.” Every person of science and invention understands this principle. Imagination is the gateway to truth. The inventor imagines the airplane before he understands the principles of flying. Einstein imagines curved space before anyone can prove that space is curved. What seems impossible is proven possible. This is how we come to God, with an open heart and an open mind. Faith is a thing we grow into, not a thing that we find all of a sudden. Atheism is the premature closing of the mind and the heart to the growth of faith. Most people who abandons faith do it in the early years of life.
36
“Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do.” Saint Thomas Aquinas
37
It is a sure sign of the decline of faith among nations whenever and wherever the name of God is virtually banned, either intentionally or from neglect, in public discourse. It is an even more certain sign of the decline of faith when skeptics openly and fearlessly mock people of faith.
38
Blaise Pascal, the great mathematician and apologist for Christian faith, knew not to state a proof for the existence of God to an unbeliever. He knew, as Kant later knew, that every proof for God would fail to convince those who were determined not to believe. Lack of Christian faith comes to those who mistakenly believe they will gain something in its place … the godlike supremacy of their own will-to-power. This is abundantly clear from the writings of de Sade, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. It is even more horribly clear in the deeds of their mutual military descendant … Adolf Hitler.
39
Without faith, we are like sheep without a shepherd. We lose our way just because there is no one who cares enough to guide us. This is why Jesus so often used the metaphor of the sheep and their shepherd. It is not by accident that the main symbol of a bishop’s authority is the shepherd’s staff. He is the one we turn to because he is supposed to care.
40
“The time will come when there will be one flock and one shepherd, one faith and one clear knowledge of God.” Saint Birgitta of Sweden.
41
How can a Christian exchange his faith for another? We may wonder how a person of another faith can look at Christ on the cross without saying to himself: “Now that is a loving God!”
42
We all love our faith, but who obeys it?
43
Some of those who attack our faith find it childlike. But this is its power. The future of a child is full of discovery and adventure. The future of a child is wild with possibilities. Christianity is forever very young, even though it be shepherded by very old men.
44
Our faith has fared rather well on the whole. The Romans tried to kill it. The barbarians from the North tried to kill it. Islam tried to kill it. Four hundred years ago it nearly dismembered itself. Then came the so-called Age of Reason, when a German wit pronounced God dead. Today the enemies of faith, who are many and multiplying, go about acting as if it does not exist, or at most is irrelevant. They do not know their history.
45
The charge often brought against our faith is that its doctrines are absurd. These same critics never admit that the Church wisely refutes the most horrible absurdity of our time … that it is logical and permissible and without consequence to kill unborn children.
46
For many educated people miracles are a stumbling block to accepting our faith. That being so, the question may be asked whether they have been badly educated. Their teachers might well have been somewhat narrowly educated people who taught that there can be no reality other than the reality in front of one’s nose. “If you have never seen a miracle, why believe?” might have been the lesson drill for the day. That being an absolute stance, none of these teachers or their students would ever have stood a chance to discover the atom.
47
With faith Abraham became the father of many nations. With faith Moses led the Jews out of Egypt. With faith David established a kingdom. With faith Jesus built a Church. With faith Peter and Paul advanced the faith. Even those who would tear up our faith have faith in something they have never seen, and praise God will never live to see … the vanishing of Christianity.
48
“The way of the faithless is harsh.” Proverbs 13:15
Hope
49
Hope is the least talked about and most constant of all virtues. There is not a day goes by that we do not experience hundreds of hopes. As the saying goes, hope springs eternal. It is the easiest of virtues to acquire, the hardest to abandon. Hope concerns most of all not what we think or what we do, but what we desire. We think we shape our own desires, and sometimes we do; but sometimes we do not. God, our parents, and the world compete to influence what we should desire. The competition is fierce.
50
“The most hopeful people in the world are the young and the drunk. The first because they have little experience of failure, and the second because they have succeeded in drowning theirs.” Saint Thomas Aquinas
51
When Thomas Jefferson noted that the mass of mankind have always turned to religion, he was touching on hope as the generating power behind religion. The fear of everlasting death will always be trumped by the hope for everlasting life. The stoutest atheist hardly ever objects that the prayers of the faithful should be for him. He may just as well hope in the efficacy of their prayers.
52
Hope is paramount. What was the life, death and resurrection of Jesus about except to give us hope that there is eternal life and happiness beyond the grave?
53
One of the great heresies of modernism is that we our locked into our destiny. Free will is an illusion, the heretics insist. Modernism is not hopeful. It is despairing and suicidal. This is why we live in a culture that is so brazenly open to the prospect of unmitigated “freedoms” on the one hand, and “My genes made me do it” on the other. Christ alone tells us we need but choose the truth, and the truth will set us free.
54
In the early days the march of Christianity was forward, never backward. This came from the virtue of Christian hope defying the presence of a corrupt and dying Roman Empire. Today one senses that the flame of hope has been diminished. Padre Pio seemed to be addressing this question when he encouraged us to remember that a boat always must go forward or backward. If it drops its oars and remains motionless, the wind alone will blow it back. Church leaders who drop their oars will reap the wind, and later the whirlwind.
55
Hope is allied to courage. It is the fuel courage burns when it goes up against the enemies of the Church. Saint John Climacus said of those enemies: “If they see our spirits cowering and trembling, they will make a more vigorous attack against us. They hesitate to grapple with a bold fighter.” Our hesitation comes only when we have run out of the fuel that hope supplies.
59
“If I saw the gates of Hell open and I stood on the brink of the abyss, I should not despair, I should not lose hope of mercy, because I should trust in Thee, my God.” Saint Gemma Galgani
60
The more we have not, the more we hope. Hope flourishes best in our darkest hour. This is why greedy people who have too much seem not to hope. They have nothing left to hope for. Some kill themselves with boredom and debauchery. Then again, they might have some faint notion of other people’s hopes and give away their bounty so that others may prosper.
61
There are those who despair at the enormity of their temptations. Rather, they should be full of hope even then. As Saint John Vianney said, “The greatest of evils is not to be tempted, because then there are grounds for believing that the devil looks upon us as his property.”
62
Like all good things, hope must be tempered. We can hope for too little or too much. As the old saw goes, we should be careful what we hope for. We may get it … good and hard.
63
According to the poet Dante, over the gate of Hell are engraved the words:
“Abandon hope all ye who enter.” The same words may well be engraved over the gates of heaven, since our great hope has been answered. But in fact the demons of hell must still hope for something … the increase of the dark empire.
64
When in doubt about whether we should hope for this or that, perhaps the best test to apply is whether Jesus would have hoped for it. That is to say, would Jesus have hoped for a trip to Las Vegas?
65
Aside from food and water, everything else can be taken from us and we can survive … everything but hope. This is why, where children are concerned, there is cruelty in telling them there is no God, they have no immortal soul, and sooner or later will be food for worms. We cannot know how many children force-fed this dark philosophy have been wounded to the depths of the soul.
66
Despair is a condition of the most extreme pain. We might recover from despair and carry on. Some offer of hope is the medicine. It would be sinful not to offer such hope. “When no one listens to me any more, God still listens to me. … When there is no longer anyone to help me … He can help me.” Pope Benedict XVI
67
History has made it quite clear that those who did more for this world were those who taught us to hope in the next world. Christ tamed the savage Roman empire, whereas Hitler, no Christian, taught Nazis to savage the world.
68
If hope is a virtue, despair is a vice. It is the worst kind of vice because there is no hope left to overcome it. Hence, the suicide.
69
Everyone hopes to avoid suffering. Jesus taught us to embrace it. Suffering gets the mind focused on what really matters … the fate of our immortal soul. Without that occasional wound, we would become wrapped up in our trivial pleasures and forget about God. Ask any hedonist.
70
Children whose hopes are viciously dashed by their parents do not have to grow up vicious. They can grow up determined to plant hope in their own children. This is just one of the reasons why atheists have trouble passing on their legacy.
71
Most virtues require some kind of exertion. Hope is often the easiest and laziest of virtues, but without it nothing would get done.
72
“Youth fades, love droops, the leaves of friendship fall. A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
73
“Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.” Samuel Johnson
“Hope is the mother of faith.” Walter Savage Landor
74
When no hope is left, one may rather easily turn reckless and criminal.
75
Hope is useless if it is not patient.
76
Hope comes from the will more so than the intellect. Yet a misdirected hope, a hope not intelligently formed and nurtured, will end in failure or disaster. A thief always hopes there is no policeman nearby.
Charity
77
“He who loves not abides in fear.” (I John 3:14) This is palpably true, because he who does not love is likely to be surrounded by many who do not love him.
78
There are many kinds of love: romantic love, family love, patriotic love, even love of animals. Love of God is like any other love. We cannot have it until we get up close and personal. In that respect we are all like babies: our first step is the hardest, and we spend the rest of our lives staggering toward our Father who waits with open arms.
79
“The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost.” G.K. Chesterton
80
There is a natural human love between husband and wife that in youth cannot be compared with any other love in the world. Lovers before the altar turn away from the altar toward each other to exchange their vows. The only love greater is when a husband and wife in their later years turn away from each other toward the altar.
81
Jesus taught us that love is power. For that reason only we might think of the Devil as impotent.
82
The so-called power of hate is an illusion because hate burns up its own ego and finally consumes itself.
83
Anger is not typical of love or of hate. It is simple overload.
84
The great mystery to our meager minds is why God, who is love, should create more things to love. Was He not self-sufficient before the Creation? And did He create the whole universe for us alone, or is the universe teeming with creatures that He loves? Has God from all eternity been creating universes to love and die for? Are these idle and useless questions?
85
When trouble brews between a godly man and a godly woman, they can turn to the free love of God for their healing. When trouble brews between a man and a woman who are godless, if they do not just walk away from each other, they might turn to a psychologist who is paid dearly to put them through hell.
86
“In all the ages, three-fourths of the support of the great charities has been conscience money.” Mark Twain
87
Charity for the poor, the sick, the lonely, the imprisoned springs from empathy. There but for the grace of God …. But empathy springs from love. No one who is cruel or hateful feels empathy. Then there is the charity of the rich, who in some cases give of their ill-gotten gains more from fear than from love … i.e., fear of divine retribution.
88
Perhaps the worst kind of extravagant giving is the kind that draws attention to itself. The giving is good but the motive is bad. What is the giver doing but trying to purchase a reputation for virtue?
89
“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.” (I Corinthians 13: 2)
90
When a man and a woman are first drawn to each other they want to shine in each others presence. The man shows off his strength and the woman shows off her looks. They give each other gifts. So it is when converts are drawn to Christ. They sometimes make the best Christians. They want God to shine through them. He does. He gives them new talents and they return them doubled and tripled in value. This is love given and returned.
91
The person who gives to strangers is regarded as a fool by the person who would give nothing on the principle that charity belongs at home and should stay there. But the latter is the real fool because, when he comes on hard times, can find no one who remembers his largesse.
92
“As the purse is emptied the heart is filled.” Victor Hugo
93
On Charity: “We should give as we would receive, cheerfully, quickly and without hesitation; for there is no grace in a benefit that sticks to the fingers.” Seneca
94
It’s a foolish policy to share wealth only at the approach of death. The terminal gift is not convincing, since it has to be given up anyway, and heaven cannot be bought.
95
We are supposed to love everyone. That does not mean we have to be emotionally attached to everyone. Charity is a matter of good will, and sometimes a good-willing person cannot even see or know the recipient of his gift. This kind of charity may seem cold, but it still requires a kind of genius for knowing when to give, when not to give, to whom to give, and to whom not to give. Such charity is never indifferent to the needs and sufferings of others and answers the call of Jesus to do unto others as we would have them do unto us in our need.
96
Thomas Jefferson said: “Why give through agents whom we know not, to persons whom we know not, and in countries from which we get no account, when we can do it at short hand, to objects under our eye, through agents we know, and to supply wants we see?”
97
Some say it is no virtue to give unless the giving hurts. This is not what Jesus said. He said the old woman who gave her last penny to the poor gave more than the rich man. He did not say the rich man’s giving was not a virtue. All giving is a virtue unless the giving is foolhardy.
98
The greater gift is not money, food, and clothes, but rather providing hope and education and providing the means to feed and clothe oneself and be usefully employed to help others do the same.
99
Why is charity greater than faith? Because people can be divided by faith, but united by charity.
100
“Charity suffers long, … rejoices in the truth, bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Charity never fails.” I Corinthians 13:4-8