The Apostle says (Romans 5:5): “The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, Who is given to us.”
As stated above (II-II:23:1), charity is a friendship of man for God, founded upon the fellowship of everlasting happiness. Now this fellowship is in respect, not of natural, but of gratuitous gifts, for, according to Romans 6:23, “the grace of God is life everlasting”: wherefore charity itself surpasses our natural facilities. Now that which surpasses the faculty of nature, cannot be natural or acquired by the natural powers, since a natural effect does not transcend its cause.
Therefore charity can be in us neither naturally, nor through acquisition by the natural powers, but by the infusion of the Holy Ghost, Who is the love of the Father and the Son, and the participation of Whom in us is created charity, as stated above (II-II:23:2).
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (II-II Question 24, Article 2)
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