What is meant by merit of condignity? It means that there is an equality of dignity or intrinsic worth and value between the work performed and the recompense bestowed. This is easily understood in regard to merely human affairs. It is not easy to understand, however, how a creature can deserve the reward of eternal life from the Creator. Good works, however excellent they may be in the finite order, and as measured by a human standard, appear to be totally incommensurate with the infinite, and therefore wanting in all condignity with an infinite recompense. So far as the mere physical entity of the works is concerned, this is really so. The gift of a cup of cold water to a person suffering from thirst, the recital of a few prayers, a trivial act of self-denial, evidently bear no proportion to eternal beatitude. Neither does a life like that of St. Paul, filled with labors, or a long course of penance and prayer like that of St. Romuald, or a martyrdom like that of St. Polycarp. The mere extent or duration of the labor or suffering, considered as something endured for the sake of God, is nothing in comparison with the crown of immortal life. The condignity of good works is not derived from an equality or proportion between their physical extent and duration and the physical extent and duration of the recompense. It is derived from an equality in kind between the interior principle from which good works proceed, and the interior principle of beatitude. The interior principle of good works is charity; not a merely natural charity, but a supernatural, a divine charity, produced by the Holy Spirit. Good works proceed from a supernatural principle, and are performed by a concurrence of the human will with the divine Spirit. They have, therefore, a superhuman, divine quality, and are elevated to the supernatural order, the same order to which eternal beatitude belongs. They are, therefore, equal to it in dignity in this sense, that they are equally supernatural. {126} The principle of divine charity in the soul is, moreover, the germ of the eternal life itself, which is promised as the reward of the acts which proceed from charity. The life of grace is the life of glory begun, and the life of glory is the life of grace consummated. The germ is equal in grade and quality with the tree which it produces, though not equal in extent and perfection. In the same manner, a little act, like that of giving a cup of water to another for the love of God, although trivial in itself, contains a principle which is capable of uniting the soul to God for all eternity. It is the principle of divine love, making the soul like to God, imitating on a small scale those acts of the love of God toward men which are the most stupendous, and therefore, making the soul worthy to be loved by God with a love of complacency similar in kind to that love which he has toward himself.