Virtue #4 Charity

I can think of no better virtue to talk about in this continuing series on vices and virtues the week before Christmas than the virtue of charity. Often we think of charity as a synonym for love. One of my favorite Christmas songs puts it, "Love came down at Christmas":

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas:
Star and angels gave the sign.
(Christina Rossetti, 1885)

But charity is really a different kind of love. Charity comes from the Latin word "caritas." Many other languages have multiple words for the concept that English expresses with one word, "love." A definition of charity in the dictionary says, "generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering."

In any case, it refers to self-giving love, not romantic or familial (family) love.

Charity is another old fashioned word like prudence, the first virtue we explored, that isn't used much today except for references to organizations that do good works to which people give their money. Charitable giving. (Is there any other kind? I guess there's also grudge or duty giving.)

But charity is a virtue that is held up in many religions, including Christianity. There is a well-known and often-quoted chapter in the Bible at weddings on the many characteristics of charity. "Love (originally charity) is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud," officiants read frequently at weddings from the first book of Corinthians, Chapter 13. "It is not rude, not self-seeking, not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love never fails" (verses 4, 5, 8).

This is all good advice for married couples to bear in mind, but the original intention of the word "charity" conjures up more the idea of God's self-sacrificing love for us than the romantic/erotic love of married couples.

God loved humans so much that God sent his son to the world: this is the "love" that came down at Christmas in the form of the infant Jesus. Another way to express charity is "an unlimited loving-kindness to all others." Unlimited means self-sacrificing, even to the point of death, and thus it was that God ultimately sacrificed himself because of that great love for us.

When I think of human examples of self-giving love I couldn't help but think of not one story but dozens of men and women I know personally who have been called upon by necessity to turn the romantic love of marriage into the self-sacrificing love of caring for a spouse who is no longer able to care for him or herself. When a spouse's personality and spirit twists into a different personality through the ravages of Alzheimer's; when a wife shrivels into a 78-pound shadow of her former self through repeated bouts with cancer, and has to be lifted onto the toilet; when a beloved husband with dementia can't get himself dressed in time to go to the doctor but mistakenly gets himself fully dressed in the middle of the night; when a husband watches his wife slip into and out of a mental illness and nothing seems to help; when a husband has to get up every half hour during the night because his wife dying of cancer needs a wet sponge put to her lips, or just to be assured he is still there: all these spouses who stand by their loved one without divorcing or running away, are practicing godly self-sacrificing love.

As one of these persons said, "I married for better or worse; we had better, now we've got 'worse'." And it is certainly "worse" to go through holidays in such situations. But if you find yourself currently in that situation, I hope you can take courage from the thousands and millions of others who have stood by their loved ones. When we show love to others, we are like God.

How do you practice charity? What gift of yourself are you giving this Christmas? I wish you a joyful Christmas no matter what your current situation.

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Contributed by Melodie Davis: MelodieD@MennoMedia.org Melodie is the author of eight books and writes a syndicated newspaper column, Another Way