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Our struggle for the kingdom of God must not be mixed with self-interest

In this context, again, a true Christian should first examine whether his zeal for the kingdom of God is not alloyed with some sort of personal interests, for that might easily be the case. Only too often, the fact that something objectively valuable is at stake provides us with a pretext for ruthlessly safeguarding our own interests on the strength of their incidental nexus with that higher cause. That is why it is necessary, before taking action, to consider the elements of the situation carefully before God—mistrusting our nature and the possible subconscious currents in our mind—and to probe our motives until we have gained a full certitude with regard to their character.

Be it understood: the fact that, in a given case, our struggle for the kingdom of God happens to converge with the line of our personal interests need not—nay, in certain circumstances, must not—prevent us from conducting that struggle to the limit of our forces. But neither must that fact be allowed to tinge in any way, to modify the quality of our combative attitude. We must carefully keep one thing apart from the other, and never for a moment stick the pretentious label of a fight for the kingdom of God on what is really an action meant to subserve our own welfare. In no wise must our pure, selfless, serene zeal for the kingdom of God be contaminated with the base coin of self-assertion.

We must not even struggle as if it were our own cause

Nor is that all. Even though we are standing for the kingdom of God, with no trace of personal preoccupations tarnishing our zeal—though we were acting perhaps, in effect, against our personal interests—the ethos of our struggle might still be overlain with aspects that render it closely akin to a conflict waged on behalf of one’s own interests but under high sounding watchwords.

Thus, this is the case if we wage the fight for the kingdom of God after the fashion of a fight on our own behalf, making it our cause in a qualitative sense, conducting it, as it were, with the massive reaction of our nature. Many men, even good men, pursue an aim conceived purely in terms of objective value, simply because they have set it up as an aim and devoted themselves to it exactly as though some private and passionately desired aim were at stake. Entirely subject to the sovereign automatism of their formal purpose, they conduct the struggle with all their natural register of moods; with all the harshness, bitterness, irritation, and petulance of one who is bent on asserting himself.

To fight in this way is incompatible with a true love of peace. Our fight for the kingdom of God must be not only motivated but informed by our response to value lifted to a supernatural plane. Its spirit must be derived not from our own nature but from God. This will find its main expression in our constant endeavor to fulfill St. Augustine’s demand: “Kill the error; love him who errs.”

While passionately combatting an injustice, attacking a false doctrine, struggling to save a fellow soul, or pitting our forces against an expanding evil, we must never lose our living charity for the sinners and the misguided, but always remain solicitous about their good, too. Our very indignation, our tireless resistance, our stubborn advocacy of the good, our inexorable opposition to evil—these must, in all their phases, be permeated by the light of love and thus cleansed from all acrimony and fanaticism.

We must remain continually aware of the dangers inherent in struggle as such

The danger to be feared is that we might possibly assume such a truly Christian attitude when engaging in the struggle but desert it later, succumbing to the autonomous dynamism of hostility. That is why it is so important for the warrior of Christ again and again to actualize before God the meaning of his fight and to soften his heart in a supreme love for God, beholding his antagonists as brethren gone astray. He must always remain