How to Grow in Charity

“The greatest of the three”

Of all the virtues, charity is the one Scripture places at the summit. Saint Paul, after naming faith and hope, concludes his hymn with a decisive word:

“So faith, hope, and charity abide, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” — First Letter to the Corinthians 13:13^[1]

The reason for this primacy is that charity alone remains: faith will give way to vision, hope to possession, but love will never pass away, because it is what we shall live eternally in Heaven. To grow in charity is therefore to begin now the one thing that will never end — “Let us begin Heaven,” Jesus said to Gabrielle Bossis^[2]. The Catechism repeats it with Saint Paul: “without charity, I am nothing”; charity is “superior to all the virtues” and remains “the greatest”^[3].

The queen and form of all virtues

Charity is not one virtue beside the others: it is their soul. Without it, the other virtues are like dead bodies; with it, they become living and meritorious. The Catechism teaches this explicitly:

“The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity, which ‘binds everything together in perfect harmony’ (Col 3:14); it is the form of the virtues; it articulates and orders them among themselves; it is the source and the goal of their Christian practice.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1827^[4]

Saint Thomas Aquinas had fixed this doctrine in a classical formula: charity is the forma virtutum, the form that gives the other virtues their orientation toward God, their last end^[5]. This has a decisive practical consequence: we do not grow in charity by cultivating it in isolation, but by doing everything out of love. Sister Consolata Betrone summed it up in a word received from Jesus:

“Jesus expected of me neither chains, nor discipline, nor additional penance, but duty, rule, and love alone. Yes, one continual act of love! That is enough: when one practices love, one practices all the virtues.” — Sister Consolata Betrone, quoted by Fr. Lorenzo Sales, Jesus Speaks to the World, Parvis, 1994, p. 18^[6]

This is why growing in charity is the shortcut of the whole spiritual life: the one who truly loves already practices, without thinking of it, patience, meekness, humility, and justice. Saint Augustine dared to draw from this his boldest maxim:

“Love, and do what you will.” — Saint Augustine, Commentary on the First Epistle of Saint John, VII, 8^[7]

What we shall be judged on

Finally, charity is the measure of our life before God. According to the Gospel, the Last Judgment will not turn first on great deeds or on doctrine, but on effective love: “I was hungry and you gave me food” (Mt 25:35)^[8]. Saint John of the Cross made it one of his most quoted maxims:

“In the evening, you will be examined on love.” — Saint John of the Cross, Dichos de luz y amor (Sayings of Light and Love)^[9]

Seeking to grow in charity is therefore not a luxury for devout souls: it is preparation for the only examination that will decide eternity. “The fulfillment of all our works is dilection,” wrote Saint Augustine: “there is the end; it is to obtain it that we run, toward it that we run; once we have arrived, in it we shall rest.”^[10]

Before the means, a clarification is needed: many fail to grow in charity because they are aiming at a counterfeit. It is confused with a feeling, with sympathy, with natural generosity. Christian charity is something else entirely, and defining it exactly is already half the path.

Loving God for his own sake, and neighbor for God

The Catechism gives the canonical definition, which deserves to be meditated word by word:

“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^[11]

Two things are decisive here. First, we love God for his own sake — not for his gifts, not from fear of punishment, not by calculation, but because he is infinitely lovable in himself. Then we love our neighbor for the love of God — not by natural affinity, but because he is loved by God and made in God's image. Charity therefore depends neither on the neighbor's pleasantness nor on our mood: it can reach the person who is antipathetic to us, and even the enemy, because its spring is not feeling but God himself.

Charity is not a feeling

This is the most common misunderstanding. Charity resides in the will, not in the feelings; it is a willing of the good of the other, not an emotion that comes and goes. One can therefore love truly while feeling nothing, and one can feel much without loving. Saint Francis de Sales, master of the love of God, placed love in the “point of the soul,” where the will adheres to God, rather than in the sensible consolation that sometimes accompanies it and sometimes is absent^[12]. The spiritual tradition speaks of affective love (feelings, which can help) and effective love (acts and service, which prove), and holds that the second measures real charity^[13]. Hence Saint John's rule:

“Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.” — First Letter of Saint John 3:18^[14]

Understanding this sets us free: growing in charity does not mean forcing ourselves to feel love, but to will and do the good of God and neighbor, even when the heart remains dry. On this point, see also Common errors concerning charity.

An infused gift, first received

The third truth, and the most consoling, is this: charity is not conquered by our own strength. It is an infused virtue, poured into the soul with sanctifying grace, not manufactured but received. Saint Paul names its source:

“God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” — Letter to the Romans 5:5^[15]

To love God is therefore first to let oneself be loved and to return the love received. Father d'Elbée brought the whole spiritual life back to this movement of response:

“God loved us first so that we might love him. That is the explanation of everything: Creation, the Incarnation, Calvary, the Resurrection, the Eucharist.” — Father Jean du Cœur de Jésus d'Elbée, I Believe in Love^[16]

The practical consequence is immense: since charity is first a gift, the first means of growth is not effort but asking. We shall return to this.

The two loves are one

Finally, we must hold firmly that love of God and love of neighbor are not two charities, but one. Christ joined the two commandments in an inseparable bundle:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart... This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 22:37-39^[17]

Saint John closes every loophole: “Those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen are incapable of loving God whom they have not seen” (1 Jn 4:20)^[18]. The neighbor is therefore the verification of our love for God: we measure exactly how much we love God by how much we concretely love the person most difficult to love. That is why growing in charity always passes, sooner or later, through service of the brother.

Charity is not a state one possesses all at once: it grows, as a child grows. Saint Thomas Aquinas distinguishes three degrees of charity, which the later spiritual tradition has brought close to the three classical ways of the spiritual life.

Beginners: fleeing sin

In the first age, the main concern is to break with sin and resist the passions that fight against charity. This is the state of beginners, in whom charity must be nourished and protected so that it does not die. Saint Thomas compares it to a child who must first be kept alive^[19]. Concretely, growing at this stage means fighting mortal sin, fleeing occasions of sin, frequenting confession (see How to grow through regular confession), and learning to prefer God to what offends him. This is what tradition calls the purgative way.

The proficient: growing in the good

In the second age, the soul is no longer content to avoid evil: its main concern becomes to progress in the good, to strengthen and increase charity by positive acts. This is the state of the proficient^[20]. Here one works on the virtues, multiplies acts of love, and practices service and renunciation. This is what tradition calls the illuminative way, where the soul, already detached from grave sin, is enlightened and drawn higher.

The perfect: union with God

In the third age, the main concern is no longer either fleeing evil or even growing, but uniting oneself to God and enjoying him. This is the state of the perfect^[21], what tradition calls the unitive way, where charity reaches its earthly fullness. The soul desires to be with Christ; its life has become a continuous act of love. This is the state of Saint Therese discovering that her vocation is summed up in one word:

“In the Heart of the Church, my Mother, I shall be Love... thus I shall be everything.” — Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, Story of a Soul, Manuscript B^[22]

Reading the table: these three ages are not sealed boxes but stages of one path. One never fully leaves the first — even the perfect still make progress — but the soul's center of gravity gradually moves from fear of sin toward union of love.

A charity that can grow without limit

One truth here frees us from all spiritual laziness: on this earth, charity has no ceiling. Saint Thomas teaches that no term can be fixed in advance for its growth in this life, because its source — the Holy Spirit who pours it forth — is without measure, and because each degree reached makes the soul capable of a higher degree^[23]. Charity grows not by extending to more objects, but by intensifying: we love the same things, but more ardently, more purely, more totally. There is therefore never a moment when one could say: “I love enough.” As long as life lasts, the invitation remains: to love still more.

Here is the practical heart of this article. The spiritual masters did not merely praise charity: they indicated precise, repeatable means, within everyone's reach. They can be grouped into a few major areas.

Ask for charity as a grace

The first and most decisive means: since charity is an infused gift, we do not manufacture it; we ask for it. Saint Paul invites us to “eagerly seek the greatest gifts” (1 Cor 12:31)^[24], and there is no gift higher than charity. To ask every day, “Lord, increase my charity; teach me to love you and to love as you love,” is already to exercise it. The divine voice — presenting itself in the text as the Holy Spirit — tells Saint Angela of Foligno that no one has an excuse, “for everyone can love; God asks of the soul only love”^[25]. Charity is offered; it is enough to open one's hand to receive it, and to ask for it again whenever one feels it becoming lukewarm.

Draw from the source: the Eucharist

Charity is not nourished first by our efforts, but by its hearth: the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. The Catechism teaches that Communion strengthens and rekindles the charity of the one who receives it:

“As bodily nourishment restores lost strength, so the Eucharist strengthens our charity, which tends to be weakened in daily life.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1394^[26]

To receive Communion often and worthily, to adore the Blessed Sacrament, is to stand at the very point where the love of God is poured out. Trying to grow in charity without recourse to this source would be wanting a flame without fire. See also How to grow through frequent Communion and How to grow in Eucharistic adoration.

Perform repeated acts of love

Charity — an infused gift of the Holy Spirit, not a virtue acquired by our efforts — yet grows on the occasion of our acts: each one disposes the soul to love more, and growth occurs when a more fervent act comes. This is the whole doctrine of Sister Consolata's “continual act of love,” to whom Jesus asked for an uninterrupted chain of little invocations — “Jesus, Mary, I love you, save souls” — in order to transform the whole day into one prolonged act of charity^[27]. The means is childlike in its simplicity: repeat often, throughout the hours, a short word of love, until the heart acquires the habit of loving as it acquires the habit of breathing.

Love in the present moment and in detail

We often dream of loving heroically one day; the saints teach us to love now, in the small detail. Saint Therese made charity a matter of small gestures: “nothings that give pleasure [...] for example a smile, a kind word” (letter 143, July 18, 1893)^[28] — a smile to the unpleasant sister, a hidden service, a restrained word. Blessed Dina Bélanger wrote that Jesus desires

“souls who offer Him all the little nothings that his goodness sows at every instant during the day, those thousand trifles which, perfumed by pure love, are like a sparkling sheaf of a thousand immaculate roses.” — Blessed Dina Bélanger, Autobiography^[29]

Growing in charity therefore does not require changing one's life, but transfiguring the life one has: doing out of love what one used to do by habit. It is the art of loving in the instant, the doorway to abandonment (see How to grow in abandonment to God).

Serve one's neighbor, especially the poor and the enemy

Since love of neighbor verifies love of God, there is no growth in charity without concrete service. The Catechism specifies how far this goes:

“Christ died out of love for us, while we were still ‘enemies.’ The Lord asks us to love as He does, even our enemies, to make ourselves the neighbor of those farthest away, and to love children and the poor as Himself.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1825^[30]

Three forms of service especially make us grow, because they expect no return: service of the poor (the works of mercy, see How to grow in almsgiving), forgiveness and love of the enemy (“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” Mt 5:44)^[31], and attention to the person nearest to us — often the hardest one. It is in these three directions that Christ placed the decisive test of love. Jesus said it to Gabrielle Bossis with moving simplicity: “If My Faithful were good to one another, the face of the world would be changed.”^[32]

Die to self-love

The great inner obstacle to charity is self-love: that turning in on oneself which refers everything to one's own interest, comfort, and pride. Growth in the love of God therefore requires, in proportion, a decrease in self-love. This is the law of the grain of wheat:

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” — Gospel according to Saint John 12:24^[33]

Saint Bernard described this ascent as a passage from love of self to love of God: one begins by loving oneself for oneself, then one loves God for the benefits received from him, then one loves God for his own sake, and finally one comes to love oneself only for God^[34]. Every renunciation of self — a whim abandoned, a right yielded, a service rendered quietly — makes that much more room for charity. Mortification and detachment are therefore not the enemy of love, but its condition (see How to grow in detachment).

Repair love that is not loved

One last means, more contemplative, belongs especially to the spirituality of the Sacred Heart and the Divine Will: consoling Love misunderstood. Before this God whom Saint Therese called the “divine Beggar for love”^[35], the soul offers itself to love also for those who do not love. Jesus complained to Saint Margaret Mary that his Heart received in return only ingratitude^[36]; he spoke to Sister Josefa Menendez of his “sorrow of loving and not being loved”^[37]. To repair is to make one's charity grow to the dimensions of the Heart of God, adding to it the love that is lacking. See How to grow in reparation.

Like every virtue, charity has its counterfeits. Knowing them protects growth, because much energy can be spent on a false love that does not make charity grow at all.

Lukewarmness

The first and most insidious trap is lukewarmness, love that goes out without dying, that keeps the appearances but has lost fervor. Revelation says how grave it is:

“So, because you are lukewarm — neither burning nor cold — I will spew you out of my mouth.” — Revelation 3:16^[38]

Lukewarmness is not a noisy sin: it is a slow surrender, a consent to mediocre love. Its remedy is precisely to take up again the means listed above — prayer of petition, the Eucharist, repeated acts — before the flame sinks too low.

Confusing charity with emotion

The second trap, already noted, is taking emotion for charity. One believes oneself fervent because one is moved at a beautiful ceremony, or good because one feels compassion; but emotion that does not pass into action is not yet charity. Conversely, one thinks one lacks love because one feels nothing, even while serving faithfully: yet that is true love. The rule of discernment is constant: charity is measured by acts, not by tears.

Philanthropy without God

The third trap is humanitarian activism that does much, but without reference to God. Social dedication, cut off from its rooting in God, can be noble, but it is not yet the theological virtue of charity, which loves the neighbor for the love of God. Saint Paul is uncompromising here:

“Though I distribute all my fortune to the hungry, though I give myself to be burned alive, if I lack love, it avails me nothing.” — First Letter to the Corinthians 13:3^[39]

One can therefore do a great deal of good without growing an inch in charity, if one acts out of philanthropy, vanity, or activism. To grow in charity is to refer every service back to God, source and end of all love. On this drift, see Political charity.

Loving “humanity” while forgetting one's neighbor

The last trap, denounced by spiritual wisdom, is loving humanity in general, abstract and far away, while badly enduring the concrete persons who share our daily life. Charity does not grow in grand universal sentiments, but in patience toward the real neighbor, the annoying colleague, the difficult relative. It is the neighbor given, not the neighbor chosen, who measures love.

How can we recognize that we are truly growing in charity? Not by a feeling, but by stable fruits that the Catechism lists.

Joy, peace, mercy

The first group of fruits is interior:

“The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1829^[40]

A growing charity makes one joyful — not with euphoria, but with the deep joy of one who loves and knows he is loved; peaceful — because love pacifies rivalries and bitterness; and merciful — inclined to excuse, forgive, and bear with others. Where one becomes harder, more jealous, more bitter, charity has regressed; where one becomes gentler and more patient, it has grown (see How to grow in meekness and How to grow in patience).

The freedom of the children of God

The second fruit is freedom. The one who loves no longer obeys as a slave or hireling, but as a child. The Catechism says so in so many words:

“The practice of the moral life animated by charity gives to the Christian the spiritual freedom of the children of God. He no longer stands before God as a slave, in servile fear, or as a mercenary looking for wages, but as a son responding to the love of him who ‘first loved us.’” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1828^[41]

The law ceases to be a weight and becomes the expression of love. One no longer asks, “What am I obliged to do?” but, “What would most please God?” — a sure sign of maturing charity.

Transforming union with God

The supreme fruit is that charity transforms the soul into the one it loves, because love makes the lover like the beloved. Saint Catherine of Genoa spoke of this secret operation by which God, having received the free will handed over to him, “reforms it little by little... with loving care”^[42]. This is the union toward which the whole spiritual life tends, and which Saint Bernard describes as the only thing God seeks in loving us:

“When God loves, he seeks nothing else than to be loved, because he loves only in order to be loved, knowing that those who love him will be blessed by that very love.” — Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, 83, 4^[43]

The spirituality of the Divine Will, transmitted to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), gives charity its final accent: loving God no longer merely by our own powers, but by entering into the very Love with which he loves. In this light, charity appears as an overflow of the divine Being over all creation.

Let us be precise about the word, for everything lies here: living in the Divine Will is not merely doing God's will — which every faithful Christian already does. It is letting one's own will fade away so that only one will remains, God's, acting in us: our acts then are no longer merely good, they become divine, of infinite value.

“Charity! Charity is nothing other than an outpouring of the Divine Being over all creation which, entirely, speaks of my Love for men and invites them to love Me.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 2, March 13, 1899^[44]

This divine charity ignores the boundaries set by human love. Where we love by preference, God loves without exception:

“Charity is dear to me to a point you cannot understand. It is simple as my Being is simple... it spreads everywhere. It shows no regard for anyone in particular, whether friend or enemy, citizen or foreigner, it loves everyone.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 2, March 18, 1899^[45]

To grow in charity, in this perspective, is to let eternal Love love in us and through us, until our love takes on the dimensions of his — without borders, without calculation, without exception. Everything then comes back to one response: “So, you love me and I love you! So let us love one another and remain always together.”^[46]

One does not grow in a virtue by fixing it as an abstract ideal, but by contemplating those who lived it perfectly. Charity has two sovereign masters.

The Heart of Jesus: loving “to the end”

Jesus is charity made flesh. He loved not by duty but by excess, and to the extreme:

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” — Gospel according to Saint John 13:1^[47]

And he fixed its measure: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13)^[48]. To contemplate this opened Heart is to learn that true charity is recognized by the gift of self, not by words. The new commandment takes its standard from there: “As I have loved you, so you also love one another” (Jn 13:34)^[49] — not merely as yourselves, but as he loved us, all the way to the Cross.

Mary, Mother of fair love

Mary is the creature in whom charity reached its perfection. Her whole being is turned toward God (“My soul magnifies the Lord,” Lk 1:46)^[50] and toward the neighbor: scarcely filled with grace, she runs to serve her cousin Elizabeth (Lk 1:39), and at Cana her attention anticipates the need of the spouses (Jn 2:3). To take Mary as teacher is to learn the charity that adores God and serves man in one movement. To grow in charity, in the end, is to resemble her Son beneath her Motherly gaze — to become, in our measure, what Saint Paul calls the “full fulfillment of the Law”: love (Rom 13:10)^[51].

Charity does not grow through great heroic resolutions, but through small and repeated fidelity. The means studied can be summarized in a simple program, moving from the most accessible to the most demanding:

Reading the table: none of these exercises is spectacular; it is their faithful repetition that transforms. One begins with one or two, holds to them, and then adds more.

The essential thing is not to aim at charity in general, but to seize, today, the concrete occasion that presents itself — this service to render, this forgiveness to give, this word of love to speak to God. For charity is the virtue that remains, the one on which we shall be judged, and the one that already begins Heaven: loving Jesus effectively and openly, for every true step toward that love is a step toward holiness, which is nothing other than charity brought to its fullness.

• What do the saints say about charity? — an anthology of the great words of saints, doctors, and mystics on this virtue.
• Common errors concerning charity — misunderstandings to avoid: charity reduced to feeling, tolerance, or philanthropy.
• How to grow in almsgiving — the works of mercy, concrete expression of charity toward the poor.
• The charity of the Catholic Church — the immense charitable work of the Church throughout history.
• How to grow in faith and How to grow in hope — the other two theological virtues, whose crown is charity.
• How to grow in humility and How to grow in trust — the virtues that prepare and accompany charity.