Charity as the Basis and Source of the Spirituality of the Religious Life 45 will humbly and cheerfully endure all sorts of experiences, duties, ‘constant crosses,’ adversities, failures, and persecutions. For the ‘powerful love of God’ reigns in the hearts of those “who do not long for extraordinary favors and graces, but who bear the yoke of divine service with the utmost holy determination” and never stop “striving on the path of perfection, of practicing charity or doing their daily toil.”53 The same idea was similarly expressed by Papczyński in his Norma vitae, where he counsels accepting, out of love of God, all experiences, both good and bad; as to the ascetical life, he concludes: “Although love is a gift of God, it is obtained and preserved however, by constancy of prayer and mortification.”54 Therefore, supernatural love is the basic tester of holiness. Wherever united love and humility are missing, the holiness would be false, illusory. Due to its nature, sin – which can take on various guises – is what is most opposite to love. Acts of divine love leading man to God must be complemented by love of neighbor. Considering the matter as a whole, it is necessary to say that love of neighbor is an extension of God’s salvific love, as it were, which is the destiny of a religious. The author of Inspectio cordis believes that a religious person, who shares in the “treasures of knowledge and of the virtues” and the “supernatural graces,” should be “distributing these treasures prudently and generously for the salvation of our neighbors”, in order “to gain the souls of many,”55 so that everyone may attain salvation merited by Christ on the cross. True supernatural love ought to find its manifestation in our attention to and ‘work’ for the salvation of the neighbor and his growth in the virtues, the first among which is love. Moreover, one of the irrefutable and unequivocal criteria indicative of a ‘perfect love’ is to desire and to actually help the neighbor, as well as “to endure for the common good, things that are painful and contrary to your disposition.” Otherwise, a religious would find himself – as 53 IC, see IV Sunday of Lent, BHC, pts. 2-3; III Sunday after Pentecost, BHC, pts. 2-3. 54 NV II, 1. 55 IC, see III Sunday of Advent, BHC, pt. 1-2; II Sunday after Epiphany, BHC, pts. 2-3; IV Sunday of Lent, AHC, p. 3.
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