The people who make a difference are not the ones with the credentials but the ones with the concern.

Just because you go to church doesn't mean you're a Christian. I can go sit in the garage all day and it doesn't make me a car

Sometimes people's spiritual ideas become fixed and they use them against those who don't share their beliefs - in effect, becoming fundamentalist. It's very dangerous - the finger of righteous indignation pointing at someone who is identified as bad or wrong.

Charity transcends mere virtue. Yet once this charity exists, it fulfills all virtue, as the New Law fulfills the Old and as grace fulfills nature. Charity is the heart and soul of all virtue.

Dostoyevsky says, "love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams" (The Brothers Karamazov).

Since (1) charity is supernatural, and comes only from the real presence of God in the soul (St. Thomas' paragraph 3), and since (2) all men, and not only Christians, are capable of charity (as has been proved in the paragraph above), it follows that (3) all men are capable of accepting the real presence of God in their souls, even if they have defective or mistaken concepts of God.

Our attempts at charity without God, our attempts at charity before faith and hope, all fail because they are based on ourselves and our own false sufficiency and our own righteousness as their foundation and cause. But the charity that comes after faith is God's own work in and through us, and is part of our own salvation.

Love works; and if we do not see the works of love (in places where they obviously ought to be) then we can be sure that love is not present.

Without this, nothing else will profit. Not orthodoxy, or learning, or eloquence, or power of argument, or zeal, or fervor will accomplish anything without this. This is what gives power to our words and persuasiveness to our arguments, making them as either the balm of Gilead to the wounded spirit or sharp arrows of the mighty to the conscience of the stouthearted rebel.

Work keeps us occupied. Faith keeps us fortified. Hope keeps us gratified. Love keeps us satisfied.

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

Whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.