FIRST CHARACTERISTIC OF FRATERNAL CHARITY
To esteem our brethren interiorly
"CHARITY, the sister of humility," says St. Paul, "is not puffed up." She cannot live with pride, the disease of a soul full of itself. It willingly prefers others by considering their good qualities and one's own defects, and shows this exteriorly when occasion offers by many sincere proofs. It always looks on others from the most favourable point. Instead of closing the eyes on fifty virtues to find out one fault, without any other profit than to satisfy a natural perverseness and to excuse one's own failings, it closes the eyes on fifty faults to open them on one virtue, with the double advantage of being edified and of blessing God, the Author of all good. Since an unfavourable thought, or the sight of an action apparently reprehensible, tends to cloud the reputation of a religious, charity hastens before the cloud thickens to drive it away, saying, "What am I doing? Should I blacken in my mind the image of God, and seek deformities in the member of Jesus Christ? Besides, cannot my brethren be eminently holy and be subject to many faults, which God permits them to fall into in order to keep them humble, to teach them to help others, and to exercise their patience?"