BENIGNITY — It is that disposition of soul by which one is glad and takes pleasure in doing good to others. While distinguishing it from goodness, St. Jerome defines its characteristics: “Benignity is a virtue that is gentle, lovable, tranquil, with sweet speech and affable manners; a happy blend of all qualities. Goodness is quite close to it, for it too seeks to please; but it differs in this, that it is less attractive and of a more severe aspect; it too is ready to do good and to render services, but without that joyfulness and gentleness which wins hearts.”
(In epist. ad Galat., 5, 22). Benignity implies at once a sense of refined generosity, of amiable welcome, of helpful and generous condescension, by which one willingly and ever more spontaneously turns toward one’s neighbor who asks for and needs any sort of assistance.
Benignity is a special attribute of God; for He, indeed, provides for the needs of His creatures, forgives their faults, and embraces His prodigal sons whenever they return to the house of the father that they had shamefully abandoned, and aids them in obedience and the practice of His precepts (cf., e.g., Mt. 6, 24; 34; Lk. 15, 11 ff.; Mt. 7, 7-12).
St. Paul, then, conceives the entire plan of Redemption in terms of the divine benignity of the Father; Jesus is the embodiment of this benignity, and His incarnation and mission are its execution, for while He lavishes His merciful goodness upon us, He also offers the active and efficacious means for supernatural good (Tit. 3, 4). Thus the apostles too, as ambassadors of Jesus and bearers of the message of salvation to men, will consider themselves imbued with this virtue, as must every Christian who wishes to be fully conformed to the Master and divine exemplar. Yet Christian benignity, being a moral virtue, lies in the golden mean; it therefore avoids goodness taken to excess, weakness, and affectation.