Weekday

SERVING EACH OTHER
IN JUSTICE AND CHARITY
By William of St Thierry 6
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[The Apostle Paul says that], if because of your food your brother is grieved, you no longer walk according to charity. Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died. For a proper reason we should sometimes avoid what is licit, but we are not commanded to do what is illicit for any reason.

[He also says,] Let our good not be spoken of as evil. What is this good of ours? It is the good proper to Christ’s disciples, of which he himself says, ‘By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’. Just as the disciples of Christ are distinguished by the sign of mutual charity, so when charity is neglected the entire brilliance of the Christian religion seems to be obscured. Then this wonderful teacher proclaims the mystery of the kingdom of heaven in order to restrain the faults of the present time by the authority of a future mystery, and in order to establish the form of the Church.

[He says]: For the kingdom of God is not food and drink. As if he said, ‘Why do we deal so much with food when we are hastening to the kingdom of heaven? For there, just as they do not marry, and are not given in marriage, so they neither eat nor drink, but are like the angels of God.’ Thus, with a most perfect and clear teaching the Apostle establishes that there is no need of food and drink in the kingdom of heaven, but that there is justice and peace. And because fleshly joy usually accompanies food and drink, he adds here joy, but in the Holy Spirit. These things effect the kingdom of heaven in us here, but in the future they lead us where these same things are possessed more certainly and more firmly. There is justice in work; peace is in the heart or conscience; joy is in the Lord. Whoever has these things already has the kingdom of God within him.

For he who in this way serves Christ pleases God and is approved by men. He who serves Christ in the Holy Spirit pleases God and is approved by men in justice, and he dwells harmoniously with himself in peace.

Let us pursue the things of peace outside because of the disposition of peace that we enjoy within; and from a disposition for justice let us keep the things that are edifying. What does justice demand more clearly than that we not destroy on account of food the work of Christ’s redemption in our brothers?

All things are indeed clean, but it is evil for a man to eat with offense, because he wounds the conscience of inner justice if the soul of his brother is endangered by that with which he refreshes himself.

6
CF 27 : 252-253.