Chapter II: First Fundamental Truth

_We are all members of the great Christian family_

CHARITY towards our neighbour is charity towards God in our neighbour, because, faith assuring us that God is our Father, Jesus Christ our Head, the Holy Ghost our sanctifier, it follows that to love our neighbour--inasmuch as he is the well-beloved child of God, the member of Jesus Christ, and the sanctuary of the Holy Ghost--is to love in a special manner our heavenly Father, His only-begotten Son, together with the Holy Spirit. And because it is scarcely possible for religious to behold their brethren in this light without wishing them what the Most Holy Trinity so lovingly desires to bestow on them, acts of fraternal charity include--almost necessarily at least--implicit acts of faith and hope; and the exercise of the noblest of the theological virtues thus often becomes an exercise of the other two.

Thus it is that charity poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, uniting Christians among themselves and with the adorable Trinity whose images they are, is the vivid and perfect imitation of the love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the Father--a substantial love which is no other than the Holy Ghost, and makes us all one in God by grace, as the Father and Son are only one God with the Holy Ghost by nature, according to the words of our Lord: "That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee: that they also may be one in Us."

Such is the chain that unites and binds us--a chain of gold a thousand times stronger than those of flesh and blood, interest or friendship, because these permit the defects of body and the vices of the soul to be seen, whilst charity covers all, hides all, to offer exclusively to admiration and love the work of the hands of God, the price of the blood of Jesus Christ and the masterpiece of the Holy Spirit.