Charity is the only good reason to do anything

The Cistercian
monk, philosopher and theologian Isaac of Stella (1100-1169) was featured in
the Office of Readings today: Charity is the reason why anything should be done
or left undone.

Charity is the only good reason to do anything, but it also
sometimes demands that we not do something we might think we want to do. There
are a lot of fine distinctions one has to make in this area to live spiritually
in common life and ministry. For example:

• We are called to support one another,
  but not to enable maladaptive behaviors, debilitating addictions, and sins. We
  must bear with the burdens of others, and be willing to wash feet, but we
  should not take responsibility for the feelings of others.
• We must seek ways to
  invite both individuals and institutions to benefit from our strengths, and
  invite them into the success that derives from them, but–again–we should be
  careful not to take interior or exterior responsibility for situations that the
  Holy Spirit has not, or not yet, seen fit to put in our care.
• Sometimes the
  greatest charity–and often the most painful–is not giving someone what he
  thinks he wants.
• We must be good to ourselves, practicing good self-care, but
  that doesn’t mean taking it easy and just ‘being nice’ to ourselves. On the one
  hand, we must not be so hard on ourselves that our whole spiritual life becomes
  a rehearsal of faults and sins, for this is one of the devil’s tricks in making
  us fail to notice God, and on the other we must also be careful not be overly
  forgiving of ourselves so as to effectively give up struggling with certain
  selfishnesses and sins.
• We must practice the sort of self-charity that
  nourishes our gifts and virtues, and is ruthless in the unwillingness to put up
  with sin.