What Are the Instruments of Good Works
Jan. 18
In the first place, to love the Lord God with one’s whole heart, one’s
- whole soul, one’s whole strength.
- Then, one’s neighbour as oneself.
- Then not to murder.
- Not to commit adultery.
- Not to steal.
- Not to covet.
- Not to bear false witness.
- To respect all men.
- And not to do to another what one would not have done to oneself.
- To deny oneself in order to follow Christ.
- To chastise the body.
- Not to become attached to pleasures.
- To love fasting.
- To relieve the poor.
- To clothe the naked.
- To visit the sick.
- To bury the dead.
- To help in trouble.
- To console the sorrowing.
- To become a stranger to the world’s ways.
- To prefer nothing to the love of Christ.
Reflection
These first instruments of good works are summed up by the twenty-first: ‘to prefer nothing to the love of Christ’. There is inside each one of us a certain contradiction that can be summed up in seven words: ‘we say but we fail to do’. What is required here is self-renunciation. Our weakness, our feebleness shows that we can do nothing without the Lord. But He is always waiting for us; He never ceases to accompany us because He wants to save us from ourselves.
