FIFTH CHARACTERISTIC
To refuse no reasonable service, and to accept or refuse in an affable manner
CHARITY is generous; it does everything it can. When even it can do little, it wishes to be able to do more. It never lets slip an opportunity of comforting, helping, and taking the most painful part, after the example of its Divine Model, Who came to serve, not to be served. One religious, seemingly in pain, seeks comfort; another desires some book, instrument, etc.; a third bends under a burden; while a fourth is afflicted. In all these cases charity comes to the aid by consoling the one, procuring little gratifications for the other, and helping another. Without complaining of the increased labour or the carelessness of others, it finishes the work left undone by them, too happy to diminish their trouble, while augmenting its own reward. "Does the hunter," says St. John Chrysostom, "who finds splendid game blame those who beat the brushwood before him? Or does the traveller who finds a purse of gold on the road neglect to pick it up because others who preceded him took no notice of it?" It would be a strange thing to find religious uselessly giving themselves to ardent desires of works of charity abroad, such as nursing in a hospital or carrying the Gospel into uncivilized lands, and at the same time in their own house and among their own brethren showing coldness, indifference, and want of condescension.
There is an art of giving as well as of refusing. Several offend in giving because they do so with a bad grace; others in refusing do not offend because they know how to temper their refusal by sweetness of manner. Charity possesses this art in a high degree, and, besides, raises a mere worldly art into a virtue and fruit of the Holy Ghost.