Manifestation of God's Love - a Literary Example

from Uncle Tom's Cabin...

Here is George, Eliza's husband, after being reunited with her and their son in a Quaker farmhouse and accepted as an equal by their hosts.

It was the first time that ever George had sat down on equal terms at any white man's table; and he sat down, at first, with some constraint, and awkwardness; but they all exhaled and went off like fog, in the genial morning rays of this simple overflowing kindness.

This indeed, was a home, - home, - a word that George had never yet known a meaning for; and a belief in God, and trust in His providence, began to encircle his heart, as, with a golden cloud of protection and confidence, dark, misanthropic, pining, atheistic doubts, and fierce despair, melted away before the light of a living Gospel, breathed in living faces, preached by a thousand unconscious acts of love and good-will, which, like the cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple, shall never lose their reward.

This seemed rather pertinent to our Deus Caritas Est discussions.

Forming in our hearts that "root of charity"...

This is a lovely bit from Cardinal Newman as quoted by Fr. Benedict Groeschel in The Virtue Driven Life...

The real love of man must depend on practice, and therefore, must begin by exercising itself on our friends around us, otherwise it will have no existence. By trying to love our relations and friends, by submitting to their wishes, though contrary to our own, by bearing with their infirmities, by overcoming their occasional waywardness by kindness, by dwelling on their excellences, and trying to copy them, thus it is that we form in our hearts that root of charity, which, though small at first, may, like the mustard seed, at least even overshadow the earth.