Charity and friendship

"ACCORDING to the Philosopher (Ethic. viii, 2, 3) not every love has the character of friendship, but that love which is together with benevolence, when, to wit, we love someone so as to wish good to him. If, however, we do not wish good to what we love, but wish its good for ourselves. . . it is love not of friendship, but of a kind of concupiscence. . . . Yet neither does well-wishing suffice for friendship, for a certain mutual love is requisite, since friendship is between friend and friend: and this well-wishing is founded on some kind of communication."

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 23, A. 1.

Read more: Charity, considered in itself

"Christ dwells in us"

"CHRIST dwells in us, namely, when we know that we hold the faith which the Catholic Church teaches and holds. But if it is taken in regard to the affectivity, then Christ dwells in us by formed faith; and in this way no one can know that Christ dwells in him, or that he has charity, unless this certainty be granted to a person by revelation and a special grace. But there is nothing to prevent us from having a conjecture [coniecturum] that we are in charity, namely, when a person finds himself so ready and disposed that he would not wish to do anything against Christ in any way for something temporal: “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God” (1 Jn. 3:21)."

~St. Thomas Aquinas: Commentary on 2 Corinthians, (2 Cor. 13:5-10) 13, lect. 2, 527. 

The Temptation of St. Thomas Aquinas, by Bernardo Daddi.

Poplar, 1338; Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

Jacques Maritain: "Charity"

“CHARITY is very different from that simple human benevolence which philosophers praise, which is noble indeed in itself, yet inefficacious in the end. Charity alone, as Bergson observed…can open the heart to the love of all men, because, coming from God who first loves us, charity desires for all men the same divine good, the same eternal life, as it does for ourselves, and it sees in all human beings the summoned of God, streaming, as it were, with the mysteries of His mercy and the prevenient gifts of His goodness.”

~Jacques Maritain: Ransoming the Time.

"Heresy and schism"

"HERESY AND SCHISM are distinguished in respect of those things to which each is opposed essentially and directly. For heresy is essentially opposed to faith, while schism is essentially opposed to the unity of ecclesiastical charity. Wherefore just as faith and charity are different virtues, although whoever lacks faith lacks charity, so too schism and heresy are different vices, although whoever... is a heretic is also a schismatic, but not conversely. This is what Jerome says in his commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians [In Ep. ad Tit. iii, 10]: "I consider the difference between schism and heresy to be that heresy holds false doctrine while schism severs a man from the Church." Nevertheless, just as the loss of charity is the road to the loss of faith, according to 1 Timothy 1:6: "From which things," i.e. charity and the like, "some going astray, are turned aside into vain babbling," so too, schism is the road to heresy. Wherefore Jerome adds (In Ep. ad Tit. iii, 10) that "at the outset it is possible, in a certain respect, to find a difference between schism and heresy: yet there is no schism that does not devise some heresy for itself, that it may appear to have had a reason for separating from the Church.""

~St. Thomas Aquinas: S.T. II-II, q. 39, a. 1, ad 3.

"Charity is friendship"

"IT IS written (Jn 15:15): "I will not now call you servants . . . but My friends." Now this was said to them by reason of nothing else than charity. Therefore charity is friendship.

"... According to the Philosopher (Ethic. viii, 2,3) not every love has the character of friendship, but that love which is together with benevolence, when, to wit, we love someone so as to wish good to him. If, how...ever, we do not wish good to what we love, but wish its good for ourselves, (thus we are said to love wine, or a horse, or the like), it is love not of friendship, but of a kind of concupiscence. For it would be absurd to speak of having friendship for wine or for a horse.

"Yet neither does well-wishing suffice for friendship, for a certain mutual love is requisite, since friendship is between friend and friend: and this well-wishing is founded on some kind of communication.

"Accordingly, since there is a communication between man and God, inasmuch as He communicates His happiness to us, some kind of friendship must needs be based on this same communication, of which it is written (1 Cor 1:9): "God is faithful: by Whom you are called unto the fellowship of His Son." The love which is based on this communication, is charity: wherefore it is evident that charity is the friendship of man for God."

~St. Thomas Aquinas: S.T. II-II q. 23, a. 1.