What’s Love Got to Do with It?
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In the first part of the Encyclical the Pope explores the meaning of the word love. He turns both to the greek of the New Testament (eros, philia, and agape) and to the hebrew of the Old Testament (dodim and ahabà). He explains love as it was created to be, as it is expressed in the Bible, and what it has regrettably become in our modern culture, but concludes that we as Christians can only truly love as we receive love from God, the source of all love.
“Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift. Certainly, as the Lord tells us, one can become a source from which rivers of living water flow (cf. Jn 7:37-38). Yet to become such a source, one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ.”
~ Deus Caritas Est, 7
It is in Christ, that we fully experience the love of God, for He Himself is the personification of love, or as Pope Benedict XVI writes “love incarnate.” So through prayer and in the Eucharist, we receive He who is the love of God offered freely to us. But this divine love that we receive is not meant to be kept inside or for ourselves, but rather to be shared with the world.
“Worship itself, Eucharistic communion, includes the reality both of being loved and of loving others in turn. A Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented.”
~ Deus Caritas Est, 14
Jesus took all the commandments and rolled them up in to one: to love God and neighbor. You can’t have one without the other. Our love of God cannot be true without loving our neighbor and we can’t truly love our neighbor without the love of God. And God doesn’t ask of us something that we are unable to give, for in giving us His love—in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ—He shows us how to love as He does.
Love is the Answer
In the second part of the Encyclical, he walks through the Church’s social teaching and shows that a separation of Church and State is certainly essential to a healthy society, but also that it is the responsibility of the Church to inspire and demand justice through charity. For this reason the Church, in this case the laity, are called to be active members in society, specifically in the politics that govern our society. We are called to fight for the protection of the rights of all people.
In sharing the Church’s social teaching, he states that our reason for being active in social justice and in doing good, we must not seek anything other than to give. It is the love of God that we give to those who are in need of it, which can of course be material or spiritual, but our acts of charity can not be true love if we have ulterior motives. We are not social workers. We are Christians, the people of God.
“Christian charitable activity must be independent of parties and ideologies. It is not a means of changing the world ideologically, and it is not at the service of worldly stratagems, but it is a way of making present here and now the love which man always needs.”
~ Deus Caritas Est, 31
The reason we take action, the cause behind our desire to love the unloved, is not for any other reason than to love. It is love itself that we must seek to give. Pope Benedict XVI explains that Marxism failed, because taking care of the material, worldly needs of the people does not in the end make as much of a difference as we would imagine.
He concludes by diving into the lives of the saints—specifically Mary the Mother of the Lord—for it is these models of the faith that we look to for inspiration. In their lived witness to the love God we to can find hope, hope that we too might be successful magnifying the Lord, in making His love present in the world, in bringing about the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
The full text of Deus Caritas Est is available online at the Vatican website. Additionally, you can purchase Deus Caritas Est in hardback, paperback, or for Kindle at Amazon.com.