By the virtue of charity, man is able to love God above all things out of consideration for God. Grounded in this love of God, man can properly love all that God has created, especially other people for their own sake.
Symbolized by a heart, love is expressed in different ways toward strangers, loved-ones, and spouses. The highest level of love is the self-sacrificial love of God.
Jesus demonstrated the love that He received from God the Father, and He commanded his disciples to imitate the love He gave to them in friendship, communion, and sacrifice.
Charity inspires all other virtues and is superior to them. Charity outlasts the other theological virtues of faith and hope which are infused into the soul at Baptism, allowing Catholics to participate in the supernatural life of God.
A person with the supernatural virtue of charity in their soul will act freely and unselfishly, and their actions will bring about joy, peace, and mercy.
More than just being kind:
Love is something that you do:
If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1 Corinthians 13: 1-7
Choosing what is good for others:
Love is an action:
Helping us to be able to love better:
Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1822
Love has different levels:
God is the only source of unconditional love:
We have come to believe in God’s love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Saint John’s Gospel describes that event in these words: “God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should … have eternal life.” In acknowledging the centrality of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel’s faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth.
Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 25 December 2005
Four stages of loving:
The summation of the entire Christian life:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
Joy is a clear sign of holiness:
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