Our final virtue is that of charity, or love.  It is last, not because it is least, but precisely because it is the first and greatest of all virtues. 

According to Thomas Aquinas, “Charity is the form, mover, mother and root of all the virtues.” 

Whether we have any of the virtues is not a matter of willing ourselves to be better—trying harder to be braver or more prudent or to have hope.  Instead, it is a matter of what and whom we love.

Augustine said that “a brief and true definition of virtue is ‘rightly ordered love.’”  This is right, because as the Bible tells us, the two greatest commandments are first to love God, and second to love our neighbor.

Start there, and the rest will follow.  For as Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians says, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Have a wonderful day.