It is understandable how the adage ‘virtue is its own reward’ has fallen into desuetude. (Indeed, the word seems to have been supplanted by its ubiquitous but impoverished substitute: ‘value’). For the most part the expression would be irrelevant in today’s zeitgeist where the only ‘good’ is the observance of laws we create to keep out of the way of each other’s self-aggrandizement. With our focus selfishly limited to the present and dismissive of the hereafter we see no benefit in those ‘habits of mind’ which appear to have no immediate bearing on our wellbeing.
For believers, however, virtue is its own reward. For them time, like the faith itself, is paradoxical. It is both temporal and eternal; it is the ‘already but not yet’; it is ‘in the world but not of the world’; it is the kingdom within us now and the kingdom yet to come. Virtue is a common reality that links the two poles in each of these time paradoxes. Those who practice it in the ‘already’ in a mysterious way experience a reassuring glimpse of it in the ‘not yet’. Through a kind of spiritual osmosis, the virtue shared by both poles in this paradoxical relationship infuses the ‘already’ with an inkling of its animating force in the ‘not yet’. In doing so it rewards its present practitioners with the reassuring conviction that even now they are beneficiaries of an eternal vibrancy. Virtue is its own reward.
But, while the virtuous may find reassurance in their conviction that life is eternal, believers understand that salvation is not ‘by virtue of virtue alone’. The Triune God who creates us is a God of love who chooses to redeem us. It is the salvific sacrifice of his Son, Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, that has opened the gates of heaven to those willing to enter. How will this come about?
In his recently reprinted book, “The Church, Paradox and Mystery’, Henri de Lubac writes: “But if, in conformity with God’s design, we care about man’s salvation, if we believe that his history is something real, if we aspire to unity, then we have no choice but to search for an axis, a drawing and unifying force, which is the Spirit of the Lord animating the Church” (p.120). Mindful of the ‘already/not yet’ paradox Christians recognize this animating Spirit in our Lord’s Church to be the axis that guides all mankind – through the course of history – from the ‘already’ to the ‘not yet’.
This is what makes Catholic philanthropy Catholic. To be sure, our donors are prompted by their virtue. Their charity moves them to assist others in need. Their hope urges them to believe they can make a difference in the world. But these noble sentiments characterize philanthropy generally. What distinguishes Catholic philanthropy (really Christian philanthropy) is that third theological virtue – faith. Faith assures them that by practicing the virtues of charity and hope donors are collaborating with the axis of God’s design and thereby participating in the advance of his Kingdom.