I was thinkin of this one, “For if you love those who love you, what good is that? Even pagans do as much.” or the steward who is fired but crafty to avoid homelessness. I think Christ points out in the first that at least pagans love their own kin, although the love there is merely
natural, as opposed to
supernatural. Here’s a quote from a blog I wrote, if it would help in a philosophical sense:
please let me share a brief Catholic perspective. We distinguish between acts that are merely naturally
good from
supernaturally good.
Let us begin with supernaturally good. The Infinite Love between the Three Divine Persons of the Most Holy Trinity is a SUPERnatural love in immeasurable (infinite) amount. It is a love that is so strong that it desires to SUFFER for even for one who would insult it.
Consider a young man who uses a girl for pleasure, like an object, and then discards her when he is finished. He has committed an insult of immeasurable proportion, for he has regarded a priceless creature called to everlasting commumion with and possession of the Infinitely loving God-- to love Him and the saints and receive reciprocal love endlessly-- as a mere finite object whose only worth is to be a vehicle towards a selfish gratification. hence, the insult is immeasurable, and hence his penalty is immeasurable.
Now the girl that is the victim could never, in a mere natural existence, desire good for the man who has done this. Only the supernatural grace of God, as a free gift, could enable the girl to desire the reconciilation of the man to God. In a mere natural condition, she could never do this.
And yet God’s love desires to SUFFER for the young man and thereby pay the man could never pay.
And so a SUPERNATURALLY good action is an action that is done with the posssession of sanctifying grace, which, in Catholic theology, is a finite, created participation in the Divine Life and Love of the Trinity. Hence, we are partakers of the Divine Nature, to the extent that the just man has received from God a true, ontologically existent spiritual essence that inheres in his soul (i.e, sanctifying grace), that, because whereas it is created and finite, is neverthless a true sharing in God’s Life, enables him to love God and his fellow man in some sense that God loves him and his fellow man.
So when Mother Teresa gave her deep love and compassion to the poor suffering souls in the degraded streets of Calcutta, she is giving this compasssion not merely for the materialistic benefit of these poor dying people, but that she may manifest, in as humble a way as possible, the Love of the Divine Savior to them, to show them that they are priceless and that God wills to give His Love to them forever, and even meaning to their remaining suffering, in that, with the possession of grace, they can unite their final dying sufferings to Christ’s and offer them for the Redemption of others, and hence truly increase the joy that they will hopefully possess with God once they cross the threshold of this life.
On the other hand, if an actress (won’t name names, but everybody knows who I’m talking about) seduces a man away from his wife, causing him to divorce and remarry, even if she should give a billion dollars to save children in Africa, it can profit her nothing if she does not possess the state of grace.
The act would not be sinful necessarily, for it is indeed naturally good, at a bare minimum, but she cannot love these children in a supernatural sense, for since she does not love the true wife, she does not love God (for as the Apostle St. John writes in his first Catholic Epistle, “for if you do not love your brother, whom you have seen, how can you say you love God, whom you have not seen?”) And whoever does not love God in a supernatural sense, cannot then love creatures in a supernatural sense. And so whereas a billion dollars is alot of money, can it purchase a human being who has been insulted and betrayed?
