Disputation IX: On the Internal Effects of Charity: Joy, Peace, and Mercy

Among the chief internal effects of Charity are enumerated Joy, Peace, and Mercy. And indeed, since a man is sometimes made sluggish in the pursuits of devotion and virtue because of weariness of Divine things, it is necessary that he be made eager and agile toward them by the affection of joy, whereby he may take delight in good works and loathe evil. Likewise, since man, being changeable amid many things, is troubled while he wavers on the sea of this world, Charity makes him tranquil and serene with Peace, subjecting the flesh pacified to the Spirit, and the spirit appeased to God. Similarly, from Charity is born Mercy, whereby a man reckons the miseries of others as his own, and either relieves them corporally or compassionates them spiritually; for since Charity is above all unitive, it transfers into itself all things of one's neighbours, whether good or evil, and strives to rejoice in them or to drive them away; wherefore mercy is twofold, as will be said below, in figure of which Solomon made a twofold little door of olive wood at the entrance of the Oracle, as the Seraphic Doctor has it, in Diaeta, tit. 7. cap. 4. But these things must be inquired into further.