A good part of our life is made up of small encounters with people we see in the elevator, in a bus queue, in the doctor's waiting room, in the middle of the big city traffic or in the only pharmacy in the small town where we live... And although they are sporadic and sometimes fleeting moments, they are many in a day and countless in a lifetime. For a Christian they are important, because they are occasions that God gives us to pray for them and show them our appreciation, as befits children of the same Father. And we usually do this through these signs of politeness and courtesy, which easily become vehicles of the supernatural virtue of charity. They are very different people, but they all expect something from the Christian: what Christ would have done in our place.
We also deal with very different people in our own family, at work, in the neighborhood..., with very different characters, cultural and human formation and ways of being. It is necessary that we practice living together with everyone. St. Thomas points out the importance of that particular virtue - which contains in itself many others - that regulates "the relations of men with their fellow men, both in deeds and in words ". This particular virtue is affability, which leads us to make life more pleasant for those we see every day.
This virtue, which should form the framework for living together, may not cause great admiration; nevertheless, when it is lacking, it is greatly missed, relations between people become strained and charity is often lacking; at times, such dealings become difficult or even impossible. Kindness and the other virtues with which it is related make daily life pleasant: family, work, traffic, neighborhood.... They are opposed, by their very nature, to selfishness, to intemperate gestures, to moodiness, to lack of education, to disorder, to living without taking into account the tastes, concerns and interests of others. Of these virtues," wrote St. Francis de Sales, "it is necessary to have a great supply and to have them at hand, for they must be used almost continually ".
The Christian will know how to convert the many details of the human virtue of affability into other acts of the virtue of charity, by doing them also out of love for God. Charity then makes of affability itself a stronger virtue, richer in content and with a much higher horizon. It must also be practiced when it is necessary to take a firm and continuous attitude: "You must learn to disagree - when necessary - with others, with charity, without making yourself unpleasant ".
The Christian, through faith and charity, knows how to see God's children in his human brothers and sisters, who always deserve the greatest respect and the best signs of attention and consideration. For this reason, we must be attentive to the thousand opportunities that a day offers.