“Love” is an ambiguous word. It has a variety of meanings for each of us. We “love”
people in different ways at different times. Love can be both an intense emotion as well
an unstable emotion. Experience also teaches us that love, whether it be our own love
or the love of others, may bring with it luggage full of motivations and expectations.
Jesus teaches us to love God with our whole hearts, our whole souls and our whole
minds, and even to love our neighbors as we love ourselves (Mt 22:37, 39).
Is it possible to “love” God, at all? Although we can have a sense of God’s presence, we
can’t see or hear or touch Him. We have moments when we feel a warmth of emotion,
towards God, for instance in a religious celebration or in a moment of quiet perception
of His presence. But do these moments add up to a whole-hearted love for God?
We feel warmly for some of the people of our lives, although even with them, our
batteries sometimes run low. We feel less warmly for others due to some disagreement
along the line and there are even some for whom our feelings are completely frozen
over and whom we would like to forget. This doesn’t add up to loving our neighbors as
ourselves, except on a limited scale. How can we love our neighbors as ourselves?
St. Thomas Aquinas emphasizes that “love” for our neighbors isn’t primarily about
ourselves. To love another person is “to wish good to that person.” To love the other so
as “to wish good for ourselves” is, according to Thomas, the love we might have for
wine or horses but not for other humans (2a2ae. 23, 1).
Thomas recognizes that what passes for “love” might also be a benign attitude towards
others, wishing them well, at a distance. According to Thomas, God doesn’t love us in
this way nor should we love God or our neighbors in this way.
How does God love us? God not only wishes us well but He makes overtures to
communicate with us. Thomas believes God’s love for us and our love for God should
be described as “friendship” because “friendship” implies not only “mutual love” but also
“communication” (2a2ae. 23, 1). He recalls St. Paul’s words, “… by Him you were called
to fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor 1:9).
Speaking of friendship with regard to God might seem startling. Just as the word “love”
is ambiguous, people perceive God in different ways. Many may find the idea of
“friendship” with God to be surprising. Yet, as we consider the thrust of the New
Testament, we repeatedly see God reaching out to us through His Son.
When Thomas says that God desires to communicate to us, he doesn’t mean only
verbal messages. According to Thomas, God communicates His beatitude, His
“happiness,” to us. God wants to give us His “happiness.” No wonder Jesus said that He
had come to bring “good news.”

When Thomas describes the mutual love between God and ourselves, he uses the
Latin word, caritas, “charity,” as distinct from the Latin word amor. Thomas says: “The
love which is based on this communication is charity… charity is the friendship of man
for God” (2a2ae. 23, 1).
We usually use “Charity” to describe care for the needy. However, even newer
translations of St. Thomas retain the word, “charity” to distinguish the virtue by which we
love God and our neighbor from love as an emotion.
Thomas locates our communications with God, “through our minds,” and in this way, “…
we have fellowship between us and God” (2a2ae. 23, 1, ad 1). Thomas may mean the
ways that we think of God and speak to Him.
“Love” for our neighbors naturally is reciprocal. We love our neighbors because of the
way they relate with us, which is why our love for our neighbors can be limited and
inconsistent. For Thomas, charity means we love our neighbors because of God.
1 Jn. 4:21 tells us, “This commandment we have from God, that he, who loves God,
love also his brother.” He reminds us that when we love someone, we love those
connected with him or her, despite whether they love us or treat us well. A modern and
frequent example of this is the effort that spouses make in accepting their relatives by
marriage for the sake of their spouses.
Thomas instructs us: “Now the aspect under which our neighbor is to be loved, is God,
since what we ought to love in our neighbor is that he may be in God. Hence it is clear
that it is specifically the same act whereby we love God, and whereby we love our
neighbor. Consequently, the habit of charity extends not only to the love of God, but
also to the love of our neighbor” (2a2ae.25,1)
For God’s sake, we even love our enemies, “whom we love out of charity in relation to
God to whom the friendship of charity is chiefly related” (2a2ae. 23, 1, ad 2).
Spontaneously, we might be drawn to good people and avoid those who are not good
but Thomas explains that we should even love those who are not virtuous, “whom out of
charity, we love for God’s sake” (2a2ae. 23, 1, ad 3). Thomas adds that, in this way, our
love for our neighbors “is not founded principally on the virtue of a man, but on the
goodness of God” (2a2ae. 23, 3, ad 1). Loving our neighbors for God’s sake extends
the boundaries of our love beyond our warm feelings.
We might think that Thomas is making Jesus’ command to love, even more challenging,
as though we actually could love people we find difficult. Thomas explains that loving,
as Jesus asks us to love, is possible.
Charity is one of the three theological virtues, faith, hope and charity that are given or
infused in us by God. Thomas explains that we need charity to be infused with regard to
our loving God:

God is supremely lovable in Himself, in as much as He is the object of
happiness. But He is not supremely lovable to us in this way, on account of the
inclination of our appetite towards visible goods. Hence it is evident that for us to
love God above all things in this way, it is necessary that charity be infused in our
hearts (2a2ae. 2, ad 2).
Thomas insists that God gives us a virtue, through the Holy Spirit. Even though the
virtue is given by the Holy Spirit and the virtue disposes us to act well, the actions
continue to be our own. Why? Because, we are free not to respond, even to the
movements of the Holy Spirit. If we did not retain our freedom to choose then our
actions, however good they might be, would not be virtuous. For Thomas, a virtuous
action must be a free action. We can choose to love or not love (2a2ae. 23, 2).
Otherwise, the Holy Spirit would be moving us the way that a puppet or marionette is
moved.
The Spirit moves us by attracting us to exercise the virtue of charity, even though we
may choose whether or not we will to act virtuously. The virtue inclines us to act
according to the Spirit’s guidance.
The God-given virtue of charity disposes or inclines our wills to love God and our
neighbor: the virtue of charity “causes the will to act with ease and pleasure.”
We find the virtue of charity especially attractive. As Thomas says, no other virtue acts
with such “a strong inclination… and with so great pleasure” (2a2ae. 23, 2). Nothing
gives us greater pleasure than to act in a loving way.
With God’s help we can grow in love. Thomas explains that every effort we make to act
in a charitable way leads to a greater charity:
Charity does not actually increase through every act of charity but every act of
charity disposes us to an increase in charity, in so far as one act of charity makes
a person more ready to act again according to charity, and this readiness
increasing, a person breaks out into an act of more fervent love, and strives to
advance in charity, and then his charity increases actually (2a2ae. 24, 6).
Thomas reminds us that the essence of God is charity, just as it is goodness and
wisdom. Our goodness and our wisdom are a sharing in God’s goodness and wisdom.
So too, Thomas teaches, “the charity by which we love our neighbor is a participation in
the Divine charity” (2a2ae. 23, 2, ad 1). Loving our neighbors, we are participating in
God’s love for them.
Through our prayers, God can give us greater charity: “God increases charity when He
makes charity have a greater hold on the soul, and the likeness of the Holy Spirit to be
more perfectly participated by the soul” (2a2ae. 24, 5 ad 3).
Denis Vincent Wiseman, O.P.

References to the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas give the part of the Summa,
the question and the article. In this case, we have the second part of the second part (in
which Thomas considers the virtues), the twenty-third question and the first article.
Thomas introduces each article with objections against what he wants to show. He
responds to those objections after his general points. These are marked as “ad,”
meaning “to” and then the number of the objection.
In general, Thomas takes the “passions,” (emotions) more seriously than most
theologians or philosophers even today. He recognizes that emotions are potentially
good, when reasonable, but he also sees that the emotions can be unsteady.
Thomas maintains that the “virtues” are ways of harnessing the energy of the emotions
by means of our human reason. According to Thomas, a virtue is an almost permanent
habit or disposition to act in a good way. Virtues dispose us to act.
A contemporary example might be that a person regularly makes coffee for the family,
each morning. It’s a simple act of kindness done regularly but not necessarily always.
The action flows from the virtue of love or kindness.
The reason Thomas insists that we are also free not to act in a virtuous way is to
preserve the freedom to choose to act or not. For Thomas, acting from necessity is less
human than acting freely: “The act of virtue is nothing else than the good use of free-
will” (1a2ae. 55, 1, ad 2). Virtue stabilizes our love so that it doesn’t fluctuate with our
moods: “In us, love is set in order by virtue” (1a2ae. 55, 1, ad 4).
Usually, we develop virtues by repeating the good actions so that they become almost
reflex actions, less dependent on our feelings for our neighbors at the moment. We
have all witnessed people who continued to be courteous, despite the pressures put
upon them by situations. Their composure was developed through continual practice in
less-challenging situations. We can become kinder and more courteous.