Supernatural charity, ‘is the love which refers all things to God above all things, even man himself. Caritas or Agape is essentially a grace. From the New Testament we learn that God's ‘design was and is to animate man with his own love that man, in and through God's love or grace, should have a kind of equality of friendship, such that he could know God as God knows himself, and love God as God loves himself in the Blessed Trinity'.

St Paul's preaching of love was to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles mere folly. This is a love which abandons all thought of self, and becomes lost in its object. Its very opposite is that type of self-interest which makes people use others for their own ends, or to gloat over their misfortunes.