Saint Catherine of Siena: “You know that every virtue receives life from love, that is, by raising the eye of our intellect to consider how much we are loved by God. Seeing that we are loved, we cannot do anything except love. Loving God we embrace virtue out of love, and we despise vice out of hatred. So you see that it is in God that we conceive virtues, and in our neighbors that we bring them to birth. You know indeed that you give birth to the child charity that is in your soul in order to answer your neighbor’s need; and that you give birth to patience when your neighbor does you harm. You offer prayer for all your neighbors, and particularly for the one who has wronged you. That is the way we ought to behave; if others are unfaithful to us, we ought to be faithful to them, faithfully seeking their salvation and loving them gratuitously and not as a debt. In other words, take care not to love your neighbor for your own profit, for that would not be responding to the love which God has for you.”
Saint Catherine of Siena offers us a readjustment to our way of proceeding for the 30th Sunday of the Church Year (Mt 22:34-40). As we move closer and closer to the end of the liturgical year and the end of the civil calendar, our thinking, prayer and relationships take on a new intensity but only if we are aware of our humanity the holy desires of our heart.