INTRODUCTION
1.
“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God
abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First Letter of
John express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian
faith: the Christian image of God and the resulting image of
mankind and its destiny. In the same verse, Saint John also
offers a kind of summary of the Christian life: “We have come to
know and to believe in the love God has for us”.
We
have come to believe in God's love: in these words the Christian
can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being
Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty
idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives
life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Saint John's Gospel
describes that event in these words: “God so loved the world
that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should
... have eternal life” (3:16). In acknowledging the centrality
of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel's
faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth.
The pious Jew prayed daily the words of the Book of Deuteronomy
which expressed the heart of his existence: “Hear, O Israel: the
Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your
might” (6:4-5). Jesus united into a single precept this
commandment of love for God and the commandment of love for
neighbour found in the Book of Leviticus: “You shall love your
neighbour as yourself” (19:18; cf. Mk 12:29-31). Since God has
first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere
“command”; it is the response to the gift of love with which God
draws near to us.
In a
world where the name of God is sometimes associated with
vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is
both timely and significant. For this reason, I wish in my first
Encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and
which we in turn must share with others. That, in essence, is
what the two main parts of this Letter are about, and they are
profoundly interconnected. The first part is more speculative,
since I wanted here—at the beginning of my Pontificate—to
clarify some essential facts concerning the love which God
mysteriously and gratuitously offers to man, together with the
intrinsic link between that Love and the reality of human love.
The second part is more concrete, since it treats the ecclesial
exercise of the commandment of love of neighbour. The argument
has vast implications, but a lengthy treatment would go beyond
the scope of the present Encyclical. I wish to emphasize some
basic elements, so as to call forth in the world renewed energy
and commitment in the human response to God's love.
PART I
THE
UNITY OF LOVE IN CREATION AND IN SALVATION HISTORY
A
problem of language
2.
God's love for us is fundamental for our lives, and it raises
important questions about who God is and who we are. In
considering this, we immediately find ourselves hampered by a
problem of language. Today, the term “love” has become one of
the most frequently used and misused of words, a word to which
we attach quite different meanings. Even though this Encyclical
will deal primarily with the understanding and practice of love
in sacred Scripture and in the Church's Tradition, we cannot
simply prescind from the meaning of the word in the different
cultures and in present-day usage.
Let
us first of all bring to mind the vast semantic range of the
word “love”: we speak of love of country, love of one's
profession, love between friends, love of work, love between
parents and children, love between family members, love of
neighbour and love of God. Amid this multiplicity of meanings,
however, one in particular stands out: love between man and
woman, where body and soul are inseparably joined and human
beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness.
This would seem to be the very epitome of love; all other kinds
of love immediately seem to fade in comparison. So we need to
ask: are all these forms of love basically one, so that love, in
its many and varied manifestations, is ultimately a single
reality, or are we merely using the same word to designate
totally different realities?
“Eros” and “Agape” – difference and unity
3.
That love between man and woman which is neither planned nor
willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings, was called
eros by the ancient Greeks. Let us note straight away that the
Greek Old Testament uses the word eros only twice, while the New
Testament does not use it at all: of the three Greek words for
love, eros, philia (the love of friendship) and agape, New
Testament writers prefer the last, which occurs rather
infrequently in Greek usage. As for the term philia, the love of
friendship, it is used with added depth of meaning in Saint
John's Gospel in order to express the relationship between Jesus
and his disciples. The tendency to avoid the word eros, together
with the new vision of love expressed through the word agape,
clearly point to something new and distinct about the Christian
understanding of love. In the critique of Christianity which
began with the Enlightenment and grew progressively more
radical, this new element was seen as something thoroughly
negative. According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Christianity had
poisoned eros, which for its part, while not completely
succumbing, gradually degenerated into vice.[1] Here the German
philosopher was expressing a widely-held perception: doesn't the
Church, with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to
bitterness the most precious thing in life? Doesn't she blow the
whistle just when the joy which is the Creator's gift offers us
a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the Divine?
4.
But is this the case? Did Christianity really destroy eros? Let
us take a look at the pre- Christian world. The Greeks—not
unlike other cultures—considered eros principally as a kind of
intoxication, the overpowering of reason by a “divine madness”
which tears man away from his finite existence and enables him,
in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine power, to
experience supreme happiness. All other powers in heaven and on
earth thus appear secondary: “Omnia vincit amor” says Virgil in
the Bucolics—love conquers all—and he adds: “et nos cedamus
amori”—let us, too, yield to love.[2] In the religions, this
attitude found expression in fertility cults, part of which was
the “sacred” prostitution which flourished in many temples. Eros
was thus celebrated as divine power, as fellowship with the
Divine.
The
Old Testament firmly opposed this form of religion, which
represents a powerful temptation against monotheistic faith,
combating it as a perversion of religiosity. But it in no way
rejected eros as such; rather, it declared war on a warped and
destructive form of it, because this counterfeit divinization of
eros actually strips it of its dignity and dehumanizes it.
Indeed, the prostitutes in the temple, who had to bestow this
divine intoxication, were not treated as human beings and
persons, but simply used as a means of arousing “divine
madness”: far from being goddesses, they were human persons
being exploited. An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is
not an ascent in “ecstasy” towards the Divine, but a fall, a
degradation of man. Evidently, eros needs to be disciplined and
purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a
certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that
beatitude for which our whole being yearns.
5.
Two things emerge clearly from this rapid overview of the
concept of eros past and present. First, there is a certain
relationship between love and the Divine: love promises
infinity, eternity—a reality far greater and totally other than
our everyday existence. Yet we have also seen that the way to
attain this goal is not simply by submitting to instinct.
Purification and growth in maturity are called for; and these
also pass through the path of renunciation. Far from rejecting
or “poisoning” eros, they heal it and restore its true grandeur.
This
is due first and foremost to the fact that man is a being made
up of body and soul. Man is truly himself when his body and soul
are intimately united; the challenge of eros can be said to be
truly overcome when this unification is achieved. Should he
aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining
to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose
their dignity. On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and
consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would
likewise lose his greatness. The epicure Gassendi used to offer
Descartes the humorous greeting: “O Soul!” And Descartes would
reply: “O Flesh!”.[3] Yet it is neither the spirit alone nor the
body alone that loves: it is man, the person, a unified creature
composed of body and soul, who loves. Only when both dimensions
are truly united, does man attain his full stature. Only thus is
love —eros—able to mature and attain its authentic grandeur.
Nowadays Christianity of the past is often criticized as having
been opposed to the body; and it is quite true that tendencies
of this sort have always existed. Yet the contemporary way of
exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure “sex”, has
become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or
rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's
great “yes” to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his
body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself,
to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena
for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he
attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless.
Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human
body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential
freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being,
but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological
sphere. The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn
into a hatred of bodiliness. Christian faith, on the other hand,
has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which
spirit and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to
a new nobility. True, eros tends to rise “in ecstasy” towards
the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very
reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification
and healing.
6.
Concretely, what does this path of ascent and purification
entail? How might love be experienced so that it can fully
realize its human and divine promise? Here we can find a first,
important indication in the Song of Songs, an Old Testament book
well known to the mystics. According to the interpretation
generally held today, the poems contained in this book were
originally love-songs, perhaps intended for a Jewish wedding
feast and meant to exalt conjugal love. In this context it is
highly instructive to note that in the course of the book two
different Hebrew words are used to indicate “love”. First there
is the word dodim, a plural form suggesting a love that is still
insecure, indeterminate and searching. This comes to be replaced
by the word ahabŕ, which the Greek version of the Old Testament
translates with the similar-sounding agape, which, as we have
seen, becomes the typical expression for the biblical notion of
love. By contrast with an indeterminate, “searching” love, this
word expresses the experience of a love which involves a real
discovery of the other, moving beyond the selfish character that
prevailed earlier. Love now becomes concern and care for the
other. No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the
intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the good of the
beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even
willing, for sacrifice.
It
is part of love's growth towards higher levels and inward
purification that it now seeks to become definitive, and it does
so in a twofold sense: both in the sense of exclusivity (this
particular person alone) and in the sense of being “for ever”.
Love embraces the whole of existence in each of its dimensions,
including the dimension of time. It could hardly be otherwise,
since its promise looks towards its definitive goal: love looks
to the eternal. Love is indeed “ecstasy”, not in the sense of a
moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing
exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its
liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic
self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God: “Whoever seeks
to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will
preserve it” (Lk 17:33), as Jesus says throughout the Gospels
(cf. Mt 10:39; 16:25; Mk 8:35; Lk 9:24; Jn 12:25). In these
words, Jesus portrays his own path, which leads through the
Cross to the Resurrection: the path of the grain of wheat that
falls to the ground and dies, and in this way bears much fruit.
Starting from the depths of his own sacrifice and of the love
that reaches fulfilment therein, he also portrays in these words
the essence of love and indeed of human life itself.
7.
By their own inner logic, these initial, somewhat philosophical
reflections on the essence of love have now brought us to the
threshold of biblical faith. We began by asking whether the
different, or even opposed, meanings of the word “love” point to
some profound underlying unity, or whether on the contrary they
must remain unconnected, one alongside the other. More
significantly, though, we questioned whether the message of love
proclaimed to us by the Bible and the Church's Tradition has
some points of contact with the common human experience of love,
or whether it is opposed to that experience. This in turn led us
to consider two fundamental words: eros, as a term to indicate
“worldly” love and agape, referring to love grounded in and
shaped by faith. The two notions are often contrasted as
“ascending” love and “descending” love. There are other, similar
classifications, such as the distinction between possessive love
and oblative love (amor concupiscentiae – amor benevolentiae),
to which is sometimes also added love that seeks its own
advantage.
In
philosophical and theological debate, these distinctions have
often been radicalized to the point of establishing a clear
antithesis between them: descending, oblative love—agape—would
be typically Christian, while on the other hand ascending,
possessive or covetous love —eros—would be typical of
non-Christian, and particularly Greek culture. Were this
antithesis to be taken to extremes, the essence of Christianity
would be detached from the vital relations fundamental to human
existence, and would become a world apart, admirable perhaps,
but decisively cut off from the complex fabric of human life.
Yet eros and agape—ascending love and descending love—can never
be completely separated. The more the two, in their different
aspects, find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the
more the true nature of love in general is realized. Even if
eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination
for the great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the
other, it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly
seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more
with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to “be there for” the
other. The element of agape thus enters into this love, for
otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature. On
the other hand, man cannot live by oblative, descending love
alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive. 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, from whose pierced heart flows the love
of God (cf. Jn 19:34).
In
the account of Jacob's ladder, the Fathers of the Church saw
this inseparable connection between ascending and descending
love, between eros which seeks God and agape which passes on the
gift received, symbolized in various ways. In that biblical
passage we read how the Patriarch Jacob saw in a dream, above
the stone which was his pillow, a ladder reaching up to heaven,
on which the angels of God were ascending and descending (cf.
Gen 28:12; Jn 1:51). A particularly striking interpretation of
this vision is presented by Pope Gregory the Great in his
Pastoral Rule. He tells us that the good pastor must be rooted
in contemplation. Only in this way will he be able to take upon
himself the needs of others and make them his own: “per pietatis
viscera in se infirmitatem caeterorum transferat”.[4] Saint
Gregory speaks in this context of Saint Paul, who was borne
aloft to the most exalted mysteries of God, and hence, having
descended once more, he was able to become all things to all men
(cf. 2 Cor 12:2-4; 1 Cor 9:22). He also points to the example of
Moses, who entered the tabernacle time and again, remaining in
dialogue with God, so that when he emerged he could be at the
service of his people. “Within [the tent] he is borne aloft
through contemplation, while without he is completely engaged in
helping those who suffer: intus in contemplationem rapitur,
foris infirmantium negotiis urgetur.”[5]
8.
We have thus come to an initial, albeit still somewhat generic
response to the two questions raised earlier. Fundamentally,
“love” is a single reality, but with different dimensions; at
different times, one or other dimension may emerge more clearly.
Yet when the two dimensions are totally cut off from one
another, the result is a caricature or at least an impoverished
form of love. And we have also seen, synthetically, that
biblical faith does not set up a parallel universe, or one
opposed to that primordial human phenomenon which is love, but
rather accepts the whole man; it intervenes in his search for
love in order to purify it and to reveal new dimensions of it.
This newness of biblical faith is shown chiefly in two elements
which deserve to be highlighted: the image of God and the image
of man.
The newness of biblical faith
9.
First, the world of the Bible presents us with a new image of
God. In surrounding cultures, the image of God and of the gods
ultimately remained unclear and contradictory. In the
development of biblical faith, however, the content of the
prayer fundamental to Israel, the Shema, became increasingly
clear and unequivocal: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one
Lord” (Dt 6:4). There is only one God, the Creator of heaven and
earth, who is thus the God of all. Two facts are significant
about this statement: all other gods are not God, and the
universe in which we live has its source in God and was created
by him. Certainly, the notion of creation is found elsewhere,
yet only here does it become absolutely clear that it is not one
god among many, but the one true God himself who is the source
of all that exists; the whole world comes into existence by the
power of his creative Word. Consequently, his creation is dear
to him, for it was willed by him and “made” by him. The second
important element now emerges: this God loves man. The divine
power that Aristotle at the height of Greek philosophy sought to
grasp through reflection, is indeed for every being an object of
desire and of love —and as the object of love this divinity
moves the world[6]—but in itself it lacks nothing and does not
love: it is solely the object of love. The one God in whom
Israel believes, on the other hand, loves with a personal love.
His love, moreover, is an elective love: among all the nations
he chooses Israel and loves her—but he does so precisely with a
view to healing the whole human race. God loves, and his love
may certainly be called eros, yet it is also totally agape.[7]
The
Prophets, particularly Hosea and Ezekiel, described God's
passion for his people using boldly erotic images. God's
relationship with Israel is described using the metaphors of
betrothal and marriage; idolatry is thus adultery and
prostitution. Here we find a specific reference—as we have
seen—to the fertility cults and their abuse of eros, but also a
description of the relationship of fidelity between Israel and
her God. The history of the love-relationship between God and
Israel consists, at the deepest level, in the fact that he gives
her the Torah, thereby opening Israel's eyes to man's true
nature and showing her the path leading to true humanism. It
consists in the fact that man, through a life of fidelity to the
one God, comes to experience himself as loved by God, and
discovers joy in truth and in righteousness—a joy in God which
becomes his essential happiness: “Whom do I have in heaven but
you? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides you
... for me it is good to be near God” (Ps 73 [72]:25, 28).
10.
We have seen that God's eros for man is also totally agape. This
is not only because it is bestowed in a completely gratuitous
manner, without any previous merit, but also because it is love
which forgives. Hosea above all shows us that this agape
dimension of God's love for man goes far beyond the aspect of
gratuity. Israel has committed “adultery” and has broken the
covenant; God should judge and repudiate her. It is precisely at
this point that God is revealed to be God and not man: “How can
I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel! ...
My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy
Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst”
(Hos 11:8-9). God's passionate love for his people—for
humanity—is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great
that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice.
Here Christians can see a dim prefigurement of the mystery of
the Cross: so great is God's love for man that by becoming man
he follows him even into death, and so reconciles justice and
love.
The
philosophical dimension to be noted in this biblical vision, and
its importance from the standpoint of the history of religions,
lies in the fact that on the one hand we find ourselves before a
strictly metaphysical image of God: God is the absolute and
ultimate source of all being; but this universal principle of
creation—the Logos, primordial reason—is at the same time a
lover with all the passion of a true love. Eros is thus
supremely ennobled, yet at the same time it is so purified as to
become one with agape. We can thus see how the reception of the
Song of Songs in the canon of sacred Scripture was soon
explained by the idea that these love songs ultimately describe
God's relation to man and man's relation to God. Thus the Song
of Songs became, both in Christian and Jewish literature, a
source of mystical knowledge and experience, an expression of
the essence of biblical faith: that man can indeed enter into
union with God—his primordial aspiration. But this union is no
mere fusion, a sinking in the nameless ocean of the Divine; it
is a unity which creates love, a unity in which both God and man
remain themselves and yet become fully one. As Saint Paul says:
“He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1
Cor 6:17).
11.
The first novelty of biblical faith consists, as we have seen,
in its image of God. The second, essentially connected to this,
is found in the image of man. The biblical account of creation
speaks of the solitude of Adam, the first man, and God's
decision to give him a helper. Of all other creatures, not one
is capable of being the helper that man needs, even though he
has assigned a name to all the wild beasts and birds and thus
made them fully a part of his life. So God forms woman from the
rib of man. Now Adam finds the helper that he needed: “This at
last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). Here
one might detect hints of ideas that are also found, for
example, in the myth mentioned by Plato, according to which man
was originally spherical, because he was complete in himself and
self-sufficient. But as a punishment for pride, he was split in
two by Zeus, so that now he longs for his other half, striving
with all his being to possess it and thus regain his
integrity.[8] While the biblical narrative does not speak of
punishment, the idea is certainly present that man is somehow
incomplete, driven by nature to seek in another the part that
can make him whole, the idea that only in communion with the
opposite sex can he become “complete”. The biblical account thus
concludes with a prophecy about Adam: “Therefore a man leaves
his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they
become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).
Two
aspects of this are important. First, eros is somehow rooted in
man's very nature; Adam is a seeker, who “abandons his mother
and father” in order to find woman; only together do the two
represent complete humanity and become “one flesh”. The second
aspect is equally important. From the standpoint of creation,
eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and
definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfil its deepest
purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is
monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive
love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his
people and vice versa. God's way of loving becomes the measure
of human love. This close connection between eros and marriage
in the Bible has practically no equivalent in extra-biblical
literature.
Jesus Christ – the incarnate love of God
12.
Though up to now we have been speaking mainly of the Old
Testament, nevertheless the profound compenetration of the two
Testaments as the one Scripture of the Christian faith has
already become evident. The real novelty of the New Testament
lies not so much in new ideas as in the figure of Christ
himself, who gives flesh and blood to those concepts—an
unprecedented realism. In the Old Testament, the novelty of the
Bible did not consist merely in abstract notions but in God's
unpredictable and in some sense unprecedented activity. This
divine activity now takes on dramatic form when, in Jesus
Christ, it is God himself who goes in search of the “stray
sheep”, a suffering and lost humanity. When Jesus speaks in his
parables of the shepherd who goes after the lost sheep, of the
woman who looks for the lost coin, of the father who goes to
meet and embrace his prodigal son, these are no mere words: they
constitute an explanation of his very being and activity. His
death on the Cross is the culmination of that turning of God
against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man
up and save him. This is love in its most radical form. By
contemplating the pierced side of Christ (cf. 19:37), we can
understand the starting-point of this Encyclical Letter: “God is
love” (1 Jn 4:8). It is there that this truth can be
contemplated. It is from there that our definition of love must
begin. In this contemplation the Christian discovers the path
along which his life and love must move.
13.
Jesus gave this act of oblation an enduring presence through his
institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. He anticipated
his death and resurrection by giving his disciples, in the bread
and wine, his very self, his body and blood as the new manna
(cf. Jn 6:31-33). The ancient world had dimly perceived that
man's real food—what truly nourishes him as man—is ultimately
the Logos, eternal wisdom: this same Logos now truly becomes
food for us—as love. The Eucharist draws us into Jesus' act of
self-oblation. More than just statically receiving the incarnate
Logos, we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving. The
imagery of marriage between God and Israel is now realized in a
way previously inconceivable: it had meant standing in God's
presence, but now it becomes union with God through sharing in
Jesus' self-gift, sharing in his body and blood. The sacramental
“mysticism”, grounded in God's condescension towards us,
operates at a radically different level and lifts us to far
greater heights than anything that any human mystical elevation
could ever accomplish.
14.
Here we need to consider yet another aspect: this sacramental
“mysticism” is social in character, for in sacramental communion
I become one with the Lord, like all the other communicants. As
Saint Paul says, “Because there is one bread, we who are many
are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor
10:17). Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom
he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can
belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or
who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself
towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We
become “one body”, completely joined in a single existence. Love
of God and love of neighbour are now truly united: God incarnate
draws us all to himself. We can thus understand how agape also
became a term for the Eucharist: there God's own agape comes to
us bodily, in order to continue his work in us and through us.
Only by keeping in mind this Christological and sacramental
basis can we correctly understand Jesus' teaching on love. The
transition which he makes from the Law and the Prophets to the
twofold commandment of love of God and of neighbour, and his
grounding the whole life of faith on this central precept, is
not simply a matter of morality—something that could exist apart
from and alongside faith in Christ and its sacramental
re-actualization. Faith, worship and ethos are interwoven as a
single reality which takes shape in our encounter with God's
agape. Here the usual contraposition between worship and ethics
simply falls apart. “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. Conversely, as we
shall have to consider in greater detail below, the
“commandment” of love is only possible because it is more than a
requirement. Love can be “commanded” because it has first been
given.
15.
This principle is the starting-point for understanding the great
parables of Jesus. The rich man (cf. Lk 16:19-31) begs from his
place of torment that his brothers be informed about what
happens to those who simply ignore the poor man in need. Jesus
takes up this cry for help as a warning to help us return to the
right path. The parable of the Good Samaritan (cf. Lk 10:25-37)
offers two particularly important clarifications. Until that
time, the concept of “neighbour” was understood as referring
essentially to one's countrymen and to foreigners who had
settled in the land of Israel; in other words, to the
closely-knit community of a single country or people. This limit
is now abolished. Anyone who needs me, and whom I can help, is
my neighbour. The concept of “neighbour” is now universalized,
yet it remains concrete. Despite being extended to all mankind,
it is not reduced to a generic, abstract and undemanding
expression of love, but calls for my own practical commitment
here and now. The Church has the duty to interpret ever anew
this relationship between near and far with regard to the actual
daily life of her members. Lastly, we should especially mention
the great parable of the Last Judgement (cf. Mt 25:31-46), in
which love becomes the criterion for the definitive decision
about a human life's worth or lack thereof. Jesus identifies
himself with those in need, with the hungry, the thirsty, the
stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison. “As you did
it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me”
(Mt 25:40). Love of God and love of neighbour have become one:
in the least of the brethren we find Jesus himself, and in Jesus
we find God.
Love of God and love of neighbour
16.
Having reflected on the nature of love and its meaning in
biblical faith, we are left with two questions concerning our
own attitude: can we love God without seeing him? And can love
be commanded? Against the double commandment of love these
questions raise a double objection. No one has ever seen God, so
how could we love him? Moreover, love cannot be commanded; it is
ultimately a feeling that is either there or not, nor can it be
produced by the will. Scripture seems to reinforce the first
objection when it states: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,' and
hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his
brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen”
(1 Jn 4:20). But this text hardly excludes the love of God as
something impossible. On the contrary, the whole context of the
passage quoted from the First Letter of John shows that such
love is explicitly demanded. The unbreakable bond between love
of God and love of neighbour is emphasized. One is so closely
connected to the other that to say that we love God becomes a
lie if we are closed to our neighbour or hate him altogether.
Saint John's words should rather be interpreted to mean that
love of neighbour is a path that leads to the encounter with
God, and that closing our eyes to our neighbour also blinds us
to God.
17.
True, no one has ever seen God as he is. And yet God is not
totally invisible to us; he does not remain completely
inaccessible. God loved us first, says the Letter of John quoted
above (cf. 4:10), and this love of God has appeared in our
midst. He has become visible in as much as he “has sent his only
Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 Jn
4:9). God has made himself visible: in Jesus we are able to see
the Father (cf. Jn 14:9). Indeed, God is visible in a number of
ways. In the love-story recounted by the Bible, he comes towards
us, he seeks to win our hearts, all the way to the Last Supper,
to the piercing of his heart on the Cross, to his appearances
after the Resurrection and to the great deeds by which, through
the activity of the Apostles, he guided the nascent Church along
its path. Nor has the Lord been absent from subsequent Church
history: he encounters us ever anew, in the men and women who
reflect his presence, in his word, in the sacraments, and
especially in the Eucharist. In the Church's Liturgy, in her
prayer, in the living community of believers, we experience the
love of God, we perceive his presence and we thus learn to
recognize that presence in our daily lives. He has loved us
first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with
love. God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are
incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and
experience his love, and since he has “loved us first”, love can
also blossom as a response within us.
In
the gradual unfolding of this encounter, it is clearly revealed
that love is not merely a sentiment. Sentiments come and go. A
sentiment can be a marvellous first spark, but it is not the
fullness of love. Earlier we spoke of the process of
purification and maturation by which eros comes fully into its
own, becomes love in the full meaning of the word. It is
characteristic of mature love that it calls into play all man's
potentialities; it engages the whole man, so to speak. Contact
with the visible manifestations of God's love can awaken within
us a feeling of joy born of the experience of being loved. But
this encounter also engages our will and our intellect.
Acknowledgment of the living God is one path towards love, and
the “yes” of our will to his will unites our intellect, will and
sentiments in the all- embracing act of love. But this process
is always open-ended; love is never “finished” and complete;
throughout life, it changes and matures, and thus remains
faithful to itself. Idem velle atque idem nolle [9]—to want the
same thing, and to reject the same thing—was recognized by
antiquity as the authentic content of love: the one becomes
similar to the other, and this leads to a community of will and
thought. The love-story between God and man consists in the very
fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of
thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God's will
increasingly coincide: God's will is no longer for me an alien
will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments,
but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is
in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself.[10] Then
self- abandonment to God increases and God becomes our joy (cf.
Ps 73 [72]:23-28).
18.
Love of neighbour is thus shown to be possible in the way
proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact
that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not
like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an
intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a
communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to
look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my
feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend
is my friend. Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in
others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern. This I
can offer them not only through the organizations intended for
such purposes, accepting it perhaps as a political necessity.
Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more
than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love
which they crave. Here we see the necessary interplay between
love of God and love of neighbour which the First Letter of John
speaks of with such insistence. If I have no contact whatsoever
with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything
more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the
image of God. But if in my life I fail completely to heed
others, solely out of a desire to be “devout” and to perform my
“religious duties”, then my relationship with God will also grow
arid. It becomes merely “proper”, but loveless. Only my
readiness to encounter my neighbour and to show him love makes
me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbour can my
eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me.
The saints—consider the example of Blessed Teresa of
Calcutta—constantly renewed their capacity for love of neighbour
from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely
this encounter acquired its real- ism and depth in their service
to others. Love of God and love of neighbour are thus
inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from
the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a
question, then, of a “commandment” imposed from without and
calling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed
experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature
must then be shared with others. Love grows through love. Love
is “divine” because it comes from God and unites us to God;
through this unifying process it makes us a “we” which
transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God
is “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).
PART II
CARITAS
THE
PRACTICE OF LOVE BY THE CHURCH AS A “COMMUNITY OF LOVE”
The Church's charitable activity as a manifestation of
Trinitarian love
19.
“If you see charity, you see the Trinity”, wrote Saint
Augustine.[11] In the foregoing reflections, we have been able
to focus our attention on the Pierced one (cf. Jn 19:37, Zech
12:10), recognizing the plan of the Father who, moved by love
(cf. Jn 3:16), sent his only-begotten Son into the world to
redeem man. By dying on the Cross—as Saint John tells us—Jesus
“gave up his Spirit” (Jn 19:30), anticipating the gift of the
Holy Spirit that he would make after his Resurrection (cf. Jn
20:22). This was to fulfil the promise of “rivers of living
water” that would flow out of the hearts of believers, through
the outpouring of the Spirit (cf. Jn 7:38-39). The Spirit, in
fact, is that interior power which harmonizes their hearts with
Christ's heart and moves them to love their brethren as Christ
loved them, when he bent down to wash the feet of the disciples
(cf. Jn 13:1-13) and above all when he gave his life for us (cf.
Jn 13:1, 15:13).
The
Spirit is also the energy which transforms the heart of the
ecclesial community, so that it becomes a witness before the
world to the love of the Father, who wishes to make humanity a
single family in his Son. The entire activity of the Church is
an expression of a love that seeks the integral good of man: it
seeks his evangelization through Word and Sacrament, an
undertaking that is often heroic in the way it is acted out in
history; and it seeks to promote man in the various arenas of
life and human activity. Love is therefore the service that the
Church carries out in order to attend constantly to man's
sufferings and his needs, including material needs. And this is
the aspect, this service of charity, on which I want to focus in
the second part of the Encyclical.
Charity as a responsibility of the Church
20.
Love of neighbour, grounded in the love of God, is first and
foremost a responsibility for each individual member of the
faithful, but it is also a responsibility for the entire
ecclesial community at every level: from the local community to
the particular Church and to the Church universal in its
entirety. As a community, the Church must practise love. Love
thus needs to be organized if it is to be an ordered service to
the community. The awareness of this responsibility has had a
constitutive relevance in the Church from the beginning: “All
who believed were together and had all things in common; and
they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to
all, as any had need” (Acts 2:44-5). In these words, Saint Luke
provides a kind of definition of the Church, whose constitutive
elements include fidelity to the “teaching of the Apostles”,
“communion” (koinonia), “the breaking of the bread” and “prayer”
(cf. Acts 2:42). The element of “communion” (koinonia) is not
initially defined, but appears concretely in the verses quoted
above: it consists in the fact that believers hold all things in
common and that among them, there is no longer any distinction
between rich and poor (cf. also Acts 4:32-37). As the Church
grew, this radical form of material communion could not in fact
be preserved. But its essential core remained: within the
community of believers there can never be room for a poverty
that denies anyone what is needed for a dignified life.
21.
A decisive step in the difficult search for ways of putting this
fundamental ecclesial principle into practice is illustrated in
the choice of the seven, which marked the origin of the diaconal
office (cf. Acts 6:5-6). In the early Church, in fact, with
regard to the daily distribution to widows, a disparity had
arisen between Hebrew speakers and Greek speakers. The Apostles,
who had been entrusted primarily with “prayer” (the Eucharist
and the liturgy) and the “ministry of the word”, felt
over-burdened by “serving tables”, so they decided to reserve to
themselves the principal duty and to designate for the other
task, also necessary in the Church, a group of seven persons.
Nor was this group to carry out a purely mechanical work of
distribution: they were to be men “full of the Spirit and of
wisdom” (cf. Acts 6:1-6). In other words, the social service
which they were meant to provide was absolutely concrete, yet at
the same time it was also a spiritual service; theirs was a
truly spiritual office which carried out an essential
responsibility of the Church, namely a well-ordered love of
neighbour. With the formation of this group of seven,
“diaconia”—the ministry of charity exercised in a communitarian,
orderly way—became part of the fundamental structure of the
Church.
22.
As the years went by and the Church spread further afield, the
exercise of charity became established as one of her essential
activities, along with the administration of the sacraments and
the proclamation of the word: love for widows and orphans,
prisoners, and the sick and needy of every kind, is as essential
to her as the ministry of the sacraments and preaching of the
Gospel. The Church cannot neglect the service of charity any
more than she can neglect the Sacraments and the Word. A few
references will suffice to demonstrate this. Justin Martyr († c.
155) in speaking of the Christians' celebration of Sunday, also
mentions their charitable activity, linked with the Eucharist as
such. Those who are able make offerings in accordance with their
means, each as he or she wishes; the Bishop in turn makes use of
these to support orphans, widows, the sick and those who for
other reasons find themselves in need, such as prisoners and
foreigners.[12] The great Christian writer Tertullian († after
220) relates how the pagans were struck by the Christians'
concern for the needy of every sort.[13] And when Ignatius of
Antioch († c. 117) described the Church of Rome as “presiding in
charity (agape)”,[14] we may assume that with this definition he
also intended in some sense to express her concrete charitable
activity.
23.
Here it might be helpful to allude to the earliest legal
structures associated with the service of charity in the Church.
Towards the middle of the fourth century we see the development
in Egypt of the “diaconia”: the institution within each
monastery responsible for all works of relief, that is to say,
for the service of charity. By the sixth century this
institution had evolved into a corporation with full juridical
standing, which the civil authorities themselves entrusted with
part of the grain for public distribution. In Egypt not only
each monastery, but each individual Diocese eventually had its
own diaconia; this institution then developed in both East and
West. Pope Gregory the Great († 604) mentions the diaconia of
Naples, while in Rome the diaconiae are documented from the
seventh and eighth centuries. But charitable activity on behalf
of the poor and suffering was naturally an essential part of the
Church of Rome from the very beginning, based on the principles
of Christian life given in the Acts of the Apostles. It found a
vivid expression in the case of the deacon Lawrence († 258). The
dramatic description of Lawrence's martyrdom was known to Saint
Ambrose († 397) and it provides a fundamentally authentic
picture of the saint. As the one responsible for the care of the
poor in Rome, Lawrence had been given a period of time, after
the capture of the Pope and of Lawrence's fellow deacons, to
collect the treasures of the Church and hand them over to the
civil authorities. He distributed to the poor whatever funds
were available and then presented to the authorities the poor
themselves as the real treasure of the Church.[15] Whatever
historical reliability one attributes to these details, Lawrence
has always remained present in the Church's memory as a great
exponent of ecclesial charity.
24.
A mention of the emperor Julian the Apostate († 363) can also
show how essential the early Church considered the organized
practice of charity. As a child of six years, Julian witnessed
the assassination of his father, brother and other family
members by the guards of the imperial palace; rightly or
wrongly, he blamed this brutal act on the Emperor Constantius,
who passed himself off as an outstanding Christian. The
Christian faith was thus definitively discredited in his eyes.
Upon becoming emperor, Julian decided to restore paganism, the
ancient Roman religion, while reforming it in the hope of making
it the driving force behind the empire. In this project he was
amply inspired by Christianity. He established a hierarchy of
metropolitans and priests who were to foster love of God and
neighbour. In one of his letters,[16] he wrote that the sole
aspect of Christianity which had impressed him was the Church's
charitable activity. He thus considered it essential for his new
pagan religion that, alongside the system of the Church's
charity, an equivalent activity of its own be established.
According to him, this was the reason for the popularity of the
“Galileans”. They needed now to be imitated and outdone. In this
way, then, the Emperor confirmed that charity was a decisive
feature of the Christian community, the Church.
25.
Thus far, two essential facts have emerged from our reflections:
a)
The Church's deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold
responsibility: of proclaiming the word of God
(kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia), and
exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties
presuppose each other and are inseparable. For the Church,
charity is not a kind of welfare activity which could equally
well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an
indispensable expression of her very being.[17]
b)
The Church is God's family in the world. In this family no one
ought to go without the necessities of life. Yet at the same
time caritas- agape extends beyond the frontiers of the Church.
The parable of the Good Samaritan remains as a standard which
imposes universal love towards the needy whom we encounter “by
chance” (cf. Lk 10:31), whoever they may be. Without in any way
detracting from this commandment of universal love, the Church
also has a specific responsibility: within the ecclesial family
no member should suffer through being in need. The teaching of
the Letter to the Galatians is emphatic: “So then, as we have
opportunity, let us do good to all, and especially to those who
are of the household of faith” (6:10).
Justice and Charity
26.
Since the nineteenth century, an objection has been raised to
the Church's charitable activity, subsequently developed with
particular insistence by Marxism: the poor, it is claimed, do
not need charity but justice. Works of charity—almsgiving—are in
effect a way for the rich to shirk their obligation to work for
justice and a means of soothing their consciences, while
preserving their own status and robbing the poor of their
rights. Instead of contributing through individual works of
charity to maintaining the status quo, we need to build a just
social order in which all receive their share of the world's
goods and no longer have to depend on charity. There is
admittedly some truth to this argument, but also much that is
mistaken. It is true that the pursuit of justice must be a
fundamental norm of the State and that the aim of a just social
order is to guarantee to each person, according to the principle
of subsidiarity, his share of the community's goods. This has
always been emphasized by Christian teaching on the State and by
the Church's social doctrine. Historically, the issue of the
just ordering of the collectivity had taken a new dimension with
the industrialization of society in the nineteenth century. The
rise of modern industry caused the old social structures to
collapse, while the growth of a class of salaried workers
provoked radical changes in the fabric of society. The
relationship between capital and labour now became the decisive
issue—an issue which in that form was previously unknown.
Capital and the means of production were now the new source of
power which, concentrated in the hands of a few, led to the
suppression of the rights of the working classes, against which
they had to rebel.
27.
It must be admitted that the Church's leadership was slow to
realize that the issue of the just structuring of society needed
to be approached in a new way. There were some pioneers, such as
Bishop Ketteler of Mainz († 1877), and concrete needs were met
by a growing number of groups, associations, leagues,
federations and, in particular, by the new religious orders
founded in the nineteenth century to combat poverty, disease and
the need for better education. In 1891, the papal magisterium
intervened with the Encyclical Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII. This
was followed in 1931 by Pius XI's Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno.
In 1961 Blessed John XXIII published the Encyclical Mater et
Magistra, while Paul VI, in the Encyclical Populorum Progressio
(1967) and in the Apostolic Letter Octogesima Adveniens (1971),
insistently addressed the social problem, which had meanwhile
become especially acute in Latin America. My great predecessor
John Paul II left us a trilogy of social Encyclicals: Laborem
Exercens (1981), Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987) and finally
Centesimus Annus (1991). Faced with new situations and issues,
Catholic social teaching thus gradually developed, and has now
found a comprehensive presentation in the Compendium of the
Social Doctrine of the Church published in 2004 by the
Pontifical Council Iustitia et Pax. Marxism had seen world
revolution and its preliminaries as the panacea for the social
problem: revolution and the subsequent collectivization of the
means of production, so it was claimed, would immediately change
things for the better. This illusion has vanished. In today's
complex situation, not least because of the growth of a
globalized economy, the Church's social doctrine has become a
set of fundamental guidelines offering approaches that are valid
even beyond the confines of the Church: in the face of ongoing
development these guidelines need to be addressed in the context
of dialogue with all those seriously concerned for humanity and
for the world in which we live.
28.
In order to define more accurately the relationship between the
necessary commitment to justice and the ministry of charity, two
fundamental situations need to be considered:
a)
The just ordering of society and the State is a central
responsibility of politics. As Augustine once said, a State
which is not governed according to justice would be just a bunch
of thieves: “Remota itaque iustitia quid sunt regna nisi magna
latrocinia?”.[18] Fundamental to Christianity is the distinction
between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God (cf. Mt
22:21), in other words, the distinction between Church and
State, or, as the Second Vatican Council puts it, the autonomy
of the temporal sphere.[19] The State may not impose religion,
yet it must guarantee religious freedom and harmony between the
followers of different religions. For her part, the Church, as
the social expression of Christian faith, has a proper
independence and is structured on the basis of her faith as a
community which the State must recognize. The two spheres are
distinct, yet always interrelated.
Justice is both the aim and the intrinsic criterion of all
politics. Politics is more than a mere mechanism for defining
the rules of public life: its origin and its goal are found in
justice, which by its very nature has to do with ethics. The
State must inevitably face the question of how justice can be
achieved here and now. But this presupposes an even more radical
question: what is justice? The problem is one of practical
reason; but if reason is to be exercised properly, it must
undergo constant purification, since it can never be completely
free of the danger of a certain ethical blindness caused by the
dazzling effect of power and special interests.
Here
politics and faith meet. Faith by its specific nature is an
encounter with the living God—an encounter opening up new
horizons extending beyond the sphere of reason. But it is also a
purifying force for reason itself. From God's standpoint, faith
liberates reason from its blind spots and therefore helps it to
be ever more fully itself. Faith enables reason to do its work
more effectively and to see its proper object more clearly. This
is where Catholic social doctrine has its place: it has no
intention of giving the Church power over the State. Even less
is it an attempt to impose on those who do not share the faith
ways of thinking and modes of conduct proper to faith. Its aim
is simply to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now,
to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just.
The
Church's social teaching argues on the basis of reason and
natural law, namely, on the basis of what is in accord with the
nature of every human being. It recognizes that it is not the
Church's responsibility to make this teaching prevail in
political life. Rather, the Church wishes to help form
consciences in political life and to stimulate greater insight
into the authentic requirements of justice as well as greater
readiness to act accordingly, even when this might involve
conflict with situations of personal interest. Building a just
social and civil order, wherein each person receives what is his
or her due, is an essential task which every generation must
take up anew. As a political task, this cannot be the Church's
immediate responsibility. Yet, since it is also a most important
human responsibility, the Church is duty-bound to offer, through
the purification of reason and through ethical formation, her
own specific contribution towards understanding the requirements
of justice and achieving them politically.
The
Church cannot and must not take upon herself the political
battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot
and must not replace the State. Yet at the same time she cannot
and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice.
She has to play her part through rational argument and she has
to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which
always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper. A just
society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church.
Yet the promotion of justice through efforts to bring about
openness of mind and will to the demands of the common good is
something which concerns the Church deeply.
b)
Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just
society. There is no ordering of the State so just that it can
eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to
eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such. There will
always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help.
There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations
of material need where help in the form of concrete love of
neighbour is indispensable.[20] The State which would provide
everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately
become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very
thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely,
loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates
and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with
the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and
supports initiatives arising from the different social forces
and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. The
Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love
enkindled by the Spirit of Christ. This love does not simply
offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their
souls, something which often is even more necessary than
material support. In the end, the claim that just social
structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a
materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can
live “by bread alone” (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a conviction that
demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically
human.
29.
We can now determine more precisely, in the life of the Church,
the relationship between commitment to the just ordering of the
State and society on the one hand, and organized charitable
activity on the other. We have seen that the formation of just
structures is not directly the duty of the Church, but belongs
to the world of politics, the sphere of the autonomous use of
reason. The Church has an indirect duty here, in that she is
called to contribute to the purification of reason and to the
reawakening of those moral forces without which just structures
are neither established nor prove effective in the long run.
The
direct duty to work for a just ordering of society, on the other
hand, is proper to the lay faithful. As citizens of the State,
they are called to take part in public life in a personal
capacity. So they cannot relinquish their participation “in the
many different economic, social, legislative, administrative and
cultural areas, which are intended to promote organically and
institutionally the common good.” [21] The mission of the lay
faithful is therefore to configure social life correctly,
respecting its legitimate autonomy and cooperating with other
citizens according to their respective competences and
fulfilling their own responsibility.[22] Even if the specific
expressions of ecclesial charity can never be confused with the
activity of the State, it still remains true that charity must
animate the entire lives of the lay faithful and therefore also
their political activity, lived as “social charity”.[23]
The
Church's charitable organizations, on the other hand, constitute
an opus proprium, a task agreeable to her, in which she does not
cooperate collaterally, but acts as a subject with direct
responsibility, doing what corresponds to her nature. The Church
can never be exempted from practising charity as an organized
activity of believers, and on the other hand, there will never
be a situation where the charity of each individual Christian is
unnecessary, because in addition to justice man needs, and will
always need, love.
The multiple structures of charitable service in the social
context of the present day
30.
Before attempting to define the specific profile of the Church's
activities in the service of man, I now wish to consider the
overall situation of the struggle for justice and love in the
world of today.
a)
Today the means of mass communication have made our planet
smaller, rapidly narrowing the distance between different
peoples and cultures. This “togetherness” at times gives rise to
misunderstandings and tensions, yet our ability to know almost
instantly about the needs of others challenges us to share their
situation and their difficulties. Despite the great advances
made in science and technology, each day we see how much
suffering there is in the world on account of different kinds of
poverty, both material and spiritual. Our times call for a new
readiness to assist our neighbours in need. The Second Vatican
Council had made this point very clearly: “Now that, through
better means of communication, distances between peoples have
been almost eliminated, charitable activity can and should
embrace all people and all needs.”[24]
On
the other hand—and here we see one of the challenging yet also
positive sides of the process of globalization—we now have at
our disposal numerous means for offering humanitarian assistance
to our brothers and sisters in need, not least modern systems of
distributing food and clothing, and of providing housing and
care. Concern for our neighbour transcends the confines of
national communities and has increasingly broadened its horizon
to the whole world. The Second Vatican Council rightly observed
that “among the signs of our times, one particularly worthy of
note is a growing, inescapable sense of solidarity between all
peoples.”[25] State agencies and humanitarian associations work
to promote this, the former mainly through subsidies or tax
relief, the latter by making available considerable resources.
The solidarity shown by civil society thus significantly
surpasses that shown by individuals.
b)
This situation has led to the birth and the growth of many forms
of cooperation between State and Church agencies, which have
borne fruit. Church agencies, with their transparent operation
and their faithfulness to the duty of witnessing to love, are
able to give a Christian quality to the civil agencies too,
favouring a mutual coordination that can only redound to the
effectiveness of charitable service.[26] Numerous organizations
for charitable or philanthropic purposes have also been
established and these are committed to achieving adequate
humanitarian solutions to the social and political problems of
the day. Significantly, our time has also seen the growth and
spread of different kinds of volunteer work, which assume
responsibility for providing a variety of services.[27] I wish
here to offer a special word of gratitude and appreciation to
all those who take part in these activities in whatever way. For
young people, this widespread involvement constitutes a school
of life which offers them a formation in solidarity and in
readiness to offer others not simply material aid but their very
selves. The anti-culture of death, which finds expression for
example in drug use, is thus countered by an unselfish love
which shows itself to be a culture of life by the very
willingness to “lose itself” (cf. Lk 17:33 et passim) for
others.
In
the Catholic Church, and also in the other Churches and
Ecclesial Communities, new forms of charitable activity have
arisen, while other, older ones have taken on new life and
energy. In these new forms, it is often possible to establish a
fruitful link between evangelization and works of charity. Here
I would clearly reaffirm what my great predecessor John Paul II
wrote in his Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis [28] when he
asserted the readiness of the Catholic Church to cooperate with
the charitable agencies of these Churches and Communities, since
we all have the same fundamental motivation and look towards the
same goal: a true humanism, which acknowledges that man is made
in the image of God and wants to help him to live in a way
consonant with that dignity. His Encyclical Ut Unum Sint
emphasized that the building of a better world requires
Christians to speak with a united voice in working to inculcate
“respect for the rights and needs of everyone, especially the
poor, the lowly and the defenceless.” [29] Here I would like to
express my satisfaction that this appeal has found a wide
resonance in numerous initiatives throughout the world.
The distinctiveness of the Church's charitable activity
31.
The increase in diversified organizations engaged in meeting
various human needs is ultimately due to the fact that the
command of love of neighbour is inscribed by the Creator in
man's very nature. It is also a result of the presence of
Christianity in the world, since Christianity constantly revives
and acts out this imperative, so often profoundly obscured in
the course of time. The reform of paganism attempted by the
emperor Julian the Apostate is only an initial example of this
effect; here we see how the power of Christianity spread well
beyond the frontiers of the Christian faith. For this reason, it
is very important that the Church's charitable activity
maintains all of its splendour and does not become just another
form of social assistance. So what are the essential elements of
Christian and ecclesial charity?
a)
Following the example given in the parable of the Good
Samaritan, Christian charity is first of all the simple response
to immediate needs and specific situations: feeding the hungry,
clothing the naked, caring for and healing the sick, visiting
those in prison, etc. The Church's charitable organizations,
beginning with those of Caritas (at diocesan, national and
international levels), ought to do everything in their power to
provide the resources and above all the personnel needed for
this work. Individuals who care for those in need must first be
professionally competent: they should be properly trained in
what to do and how to do it, and committed to continuing care.
Yet, while professional competence is a primary, fundamental
requirement, it is not of itself sufficient. We are dealing with
human beings, and human beings always need something more than
technically proper care. They need humanity. They need heartfelt
concern. Those who work for the Church's charitable
organizations must be distinguished by the fact that they do not
merely meet the needs of the moment, but they dedicate
themselves to others with heartfelt concern, enabling them to
experience the richness of their humanity. Consequently, in
addition to their necessary professional training, these charity
workers need a “formation of the heart”: they need to be led to
that encounter with God in Christ which awakens their love and
opens their spirits to others. As a result, love of neighbour
will no longer be for them a commandment imposed, so to speak,
from without, but a consequence deriving from their faith, a
faith which becomes active through love (cf. Gal 5:6).
b)
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. The modern age, particularly from
the nineteenth century on, has been dominated by various
versions of a philosophy of progress whose most radical form is
Marxism. Part of Marxist strategy is the theory of
impoverishment: in a situation of unjust power, it is claimed,
anyone who engages in charitable initiatives is actually serving
that unjust system, making it appear at least to some extent
tolerable. This in turn slows down a potential revolution and
thus blocks the struggle for a better world. Seen in this way,
charity is rejected and attacked as a means of preserving the
status quo. What we have here, though, is really an inhuman
philosophy. People of the present are sacrificed to the moloch
of the future—a future whose effective realization is at best
doubtful. One does not make the world more human by refusing to
act humanely here and now. We contribute to a better world only
by personally doing good now, with full commitment and wherever
we have the opportunity, independently of partisan strategies
and programmes. The Christian's programme —the programme of the
Good Samaritan, the programme of Jesus—is “a heart which sees”.
This heart sees where love is needed and acts accordingly.
Obviously when charitable activity is carried out by the Church
as a communitarian initiative, the spontaneity of individuals
must be combined with planning, foresight and cooperation with
other similar institutions.
c)
Charity, furthermore, cannot be used as a means of engaging in
what is nowadays considered proselytism. Love is free; it is not
practised as a way of achieving other ends.[30] But this does
not mean that charitable activity must somehow leave God and
Christ aside. For it is always concerned with the whole man.
Often the deepest cause of suffering is the very absence of God.
Those who practise charity in the Church's name will never seek
to impose the Church's faith upon others. They realize that a
pure and generous love is the best witness to the God in whom we
believe and by whom we are driven to love. A Christian knows
when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say
nothing and to let love alone speak. He knows that God is love
(cf. 1 Jn 4:8) and that God's presence is felt at the very time
when the only thing we do is to love. He knows—to return to the
questions raised earlier—that disdain for love is disdain for
God and man alike; it is an attempt to do without God.
Consequently, the best defence of God and man consists precisely
in love. It is the responsibility of the Church's charitable
organizations to reinforce this awareness in their members, so
that by their activity—as well as their words, their silence,
their example—they may be credible witnesses to Christ.
Those responsible for the Church's charitable activity
32.
Finally, we must turn our attention once again to those who are
responsible for carrying out the Church's charitable activity.
As our preceding reflections have made clear, the true subject
of the various Catholic organizations that carry out a ministry
of charity is the Church herself—at all levels, from the
parishes, through the particular Churches, to the universal
Church. For this reason it was most opportune that my venerable
predecessor Paul VI established the Pontifical Council Cor Unum
as the agency of the Holy See responsible for orienting and
coordinating the organizations and charitable activities
promoted by the Catholic Church. In conformity with the
episcopal structure of the Church, the Bishops, as successors of
the Apostles, are charged with primary responsibility for
carrying out in the particular Churches the programme set forth
in the Acts of the Apostles (cf. 2:42-44): today as in the past,
the Church as God's family must be a place where help is given
and received, and at the same time, a place where people are
also prepared to serve those outside her confines who are in
need of help. In the rite of episcopal ordination, prior to the
act of consecration itself, the candidate must respond to
several questions which express the essential elements of his
office and recall the duties of his future ministry. He promises
expressly to be, in the Lord's name, welcoming and merciful to
the poor and to all those in need of consolation and
assistance.[31] The Code of Canon Law, in the canons on the
ministry of the Bishop, does not expressly mention charity as a
specific sector of episcopal activity, but speaks in general
terms of the Bishop's responsibility for coordinating the
different works of the apostolate with due regard for their
proper character.[32] Recently, however, the Directory for the
Pastoral Ministry of Bishops explored more specifically the duty
of charity as a responsibility incumbent upon the whole Church
and upon each Bishop in his Diocese,[33] and it emphasized that
the exercise of charity is an action of the Church as such, and
that, like the ministry of Word and Sacrament, it too has been
an essential part of her mission from the very beginning.[34]
33.
With regard to the personnel who carry out the Church's
charitable activity on the practical level, the essential has
already been said: they must not be inspired by ideologies aimed
at improving the world, but should rather be guided by the faith
which works through love (cf. Gal 5:6). Consequently, more than
anything, they must be persons moved by Christ's love, persons
whose hearts Christ has conquered with his love, awakening
within them a love of neighbour. The criterion inspiring their
activity should be Saint Paul's statement in the Second Letter
to the Corinthians: “the love of Christ urges us on” (5:14). The
consciousness that, in Christ, God has given himself for us,
even unto death, must inspire us to live no longer for ourselves
but for him, and, with him, for others. Whoever loves Christ
loves the Church, and desires the Church to be increasingly the
image and instrument of the love which flows from Christ. The
personnel of every Catholic charitable organization want to work
with the Church and therefore with the Bishop, so that the love
of God can spread throughout the world. By their sharing in the
Church's practice of love, they wish to be witnesses of God and
of Christ, and they wish for this very reason freely to do good
to all.
34.
Interior openness to the Catholic dimension of the Church cannot
fail to dispose charity workers to work in harmony with other
organizations in serving various forms of need, but in a way
that respects what is distinctive about the service which Christ
requested of his disciples. Saint Paul, in his hymn to charity
(cf. 1 Cor 13), teaches us that it is always more than activity
alone: “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to
be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing” (v. 3). This
hymn must be the Magna Carta of all ecclesial service; it sums
up all the reflections on love which I have offered throughout
this Encyclical Letter. Practical activity will always be
insufficient, unless it visibly expresses a love for man, a love
nourished by an encounter with Christ. My deep personal sharing
in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my
very self with them: if my gift is not to prove a source of
humiliation, I must give to others not only something that is my
own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift.
35.
This proper way of serving others also leads to humility. The
one who serves does not consider himself superior to the one
served, however miserable his situation at the moment may be.
Christ took the lowest place in the world—the Cross—and by this
radical humility he redeemed us and constantly comes to our aid.
Those who are in a position to help others will realize that in
doing so they themselves receive help; being able to help others
is no merit or achievement of their own. This duty is a grace.
The more we do for others, the more we understand and can
appropriate the words of Christ: “We are useless servants” (Lk
17:10). We recognize that we are not acting on the basis of any
superiority or greater personal efficiency, but because the Lord
has graciously enabled us to do so. There are times when the
burden of need and our own limitations might tempt us to become
discouraged. But precisely then we are helped by the knowledge
that, in the end, we are only instruments in the Lord's hands;
and this knowledge frees us from the presumption of thinking
that we alone are personally responsible for building a better
world. In all humility we will do what we can, and in all
humility we will entrust the rest to the Lord. It is God who
governs the world, not we. We offer him our service only to the
extent that we can, and for as long as he grants us the
strength. To do all we can with what strength we have, however,
is the task which keeps the good servant of Jesus Christ always
at work: “The love of Christ urges us on” (2 Cor 5:14).
36.
When we consider the immensity of others' needs, we can, on the
one hand, be driven towards an ideology that would aim at doing
what God's governance of the world apparently cannot: fully
resolving every problem. Or we can be tempted to give in to
inertia, since it would seem that in any event nothing can be
accomplished. At such times, a living relationship with Christ
is decisive if we are to keep on the right path, without falling
into an arrogant contempt for man, something not only
unconstructive but actually destructive, or surrendering to a
resignation which would prevent us from being guided by love in
the service of others. Prayer, as a means of drawing ever new
strength from Christ, is concretely and urgently needed. People
who pray are not wasting their time, even though the situation
appears desperate and seems to call for action alone. Piety does
not undermine the struggle against the poverty of our
neighbours, however extreme. In the example of Blessed Teresa of
Calcutta we have a clear illustration of the fact that time
devoted to God in prayer not only does not detract from
effective and loving service to our neighbour but is in fact the
inexhaustible source of that service. In her letter for Lent
1996, Blessed Teresa wrote to her lay co-workers: “We need this
deep connection with God in our daily life. How can we obtain
it? By prayer”.
37.
It is time to reaffirm the importance of prayer in the face of
the activism and the growing secularism of many Christians
engaged in charitable work. Clearly, the Christian who prays
does not claim to be able to change God's plans or correct what
he has foreseen. Rather, he seeks an encounter with the Father
of Jesus Christ, asking God to be present with the consolation
of the Spirit to him and his work. A personal relationship with
God and an abandonment to his will can prevent man from being
demeaned and save him from falling prey to the teaching of
fanaticism and terrorism. An authentically religious attitude
prevents man from presuming to judge God, accusing him of
allowing poverty and failing to have compassion for his
creatures. When people claim to build a case against God in
defence of man, on whom can they depend when human activity
proves powerless?
38.
Certainly Job could complain before God about the presence of
incomprehensible and apparently unjustified suffering in the
world. In his pain he cried out: “Oh, that I knew where I might
find him, that I might come even to his seat! ... I would learn
what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me.
Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? ...
Therefore I am terrified at his presence; when I consider, I am
in dread of him. God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has
terrified me” (23:3, 5-6, 15-16). Often we cannot understand why
God refrains from intervening. Yet he does not prevent us from
crying out, like Jesus on the Cross: “My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). We should continue asking this
question in prayerful dialogue before his face: “Lord, holy and
true, how long will it be?” (Rev 6:10). It is Saint Augustine
who gives us faith's answer to our sufferings: “Si comprehendis,
non est Deus”—”if you understand him, he is not God.” [35] Our
protest is not meant to challenge God, or to suggest that error,
weakness or indifference can be found in him. For the believer,
it is impossible to imagine that God is powerless or that
“perhaps he is asleep” (cf. 1 Kg 18:27). Instead, our crying out
is, as it was for Jesus on the Cross, the deepest and most
radical way of affirming our faith in his sovereign power. Even
in their bewilderment and failure to understand the world around
them, Christians continue to believe in the “goodness and loving
kindness of God” (Tit 3:4). Immersed like everyone else in the
dramatic complexity of historical events, they remain unshakably
certain that God is our Father and loves us, even when his
silence remains incomprehensible.
39.
Faith, hope and charity go together. Hope is practised through
the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the
face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility,
which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of
darkness. Faith tells us that God has given his Son for our
sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really
true: God is love! It thus transforms our impatience and our
doubts into the sure hope that God holds the world in his hands
and that, as the dramatic imagery of the end of the Book of
Revelation points out, in spite of all darkness he ultimately
triumphs in glory. Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in
the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love.
Love is the light—and in the end, the only light—that can always
illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to
keep living and working. Love is possible, and we are able to
practise it because we are created in the image of God. To
experience love and in this way to cause the light of God to
enter into the world—this is the invitation I would like to
extend with the present Encyclical.
CONCLUSION
40.
Finally, let us consider the saints, who exercised charity in an
exemplary way. Our thoughts turn especially to Martin of Tours
(† 397), the soldier who became a monk and a bishop: he is
almost like an icon, illustrating the irreplaceable value of the
individual testimony to charity. At the gates of Amiens, Martin
gave half of his cloak to a poor man: Jesus himself, that night,
appeared to him in a dream wearing that cloak, confirming the
permanent validity of the Gospel saying: “I was naked and you
clothed me ... as you did it to one of the least of these my
brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:36, 40).[36] Yet in the
history of the Church, how many other testimonies to charity
could be quoted! In particular, the entire monastic movement,
from its origins with Saint Anthony the Abbot († 356), expresses
an immense service of charity towards neighbour. In his
encounter “face to face” with the God who is Love, the monk
senses the impelling need to transform his whole life into
service of neighbour, in addition to service of God. This
explains the great emphasis on hospitality, refuge and care of
the infirm in the vicinity of the monasteries. It also explains
the immense initiatives of human welfare and Christian
formation, aimed above all at the very poor, who became the
object of care firstly for the monastic and mendicant orders,
and later for the various male and female religious institutes
all through the history of the Church. The figures of saints
such as Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola, John of God,
Camillus of Lellis, Vincent de Paul, Louise de Marillac,
Giuseppe B. Cottolengo, John Bosco, Luigi Orione, Teresa of
Calcutta to name but a few—stand out as lasting models of social
charity for all people of good will. The saints are the true
bearers of light within history, for they are men and women of
faith, hope and love.
41.
Outstanding among the saints is Mary, Mother of the Lord and
mirror of all holiness. In the Gospel of Luke we find her
engaged in a service of charity to her cousin Elizabeth, with
whom she remained for “about three months” (1:56) so as to
assist her in the final phase of her pregnancy. “Magnificat
anima mea Dominum”, she says on the occasion of that visit, “My
soul magnifies the Lord” (Lk 1:46). In these words she expresses
her whole programme of life: not setting herself at the centre,
but leaving space for God, who is encountered both in prayer and
in service of neighbour—only then does goodness enter the world.
Mary's greatness consists in the fact that she wants to magnify
God, not herself. She is lowly: her only desire is to be the
handmaid of the Lord (cf. Lk 1:38, 48). She knows that she will
only contribute to the salvation of the world if, rather than
carrying out her own projects, she places herself completely at
the disposal of God's initiatives. Mary is a woman of hope: only
because she believes in God's promises and awaits the salvation
of Israel, can the angel visit her and call her to the decisive
service of these promises. Mary is a woman of faith: “Blessed
are you who believed”, Elizabeth says to her (cf. Lk 1:45). The
Magnificat—a portrait, so to speak, of her soul—is entirely
woven from threads of Holy Scripture, threads drawn from the
Word of God. Here we see how completely at home Mary is with the
Word of God, with ease she moves in and out of it. She speaks
and thinks with the Word of God; the Word of God becomes her
word, and her word issues from the Word of God. Here we see how
her thoughts are attuned to the thoughts of God, how her will is
one with the will of God. Since Mary is completely imbued with
the Word of God, she is able to become the Mother of the Word
Incarnate. Finally, Mary is a woman who loves. How could it be
otherwise? As a believer who in faith thinks with God's thoughts
and wills with God's will, she cannot fail to be a woman who
loves. We sense this in her quiet gestures, as recounted by the
infancy narratives in the Gospel. We see it in the delicacy with
which she recognizes the need of the spouses at Cana and makes
it known to Jesus. We see it in the humility with which she
recedes into the background during Jesus' public life, knowing
that the Son must establish a new family and that the Mother's
hour will come only with the Cross, which will be Jesus' true
hour (cf. Jn 2:4; 13:1). When the disciples flee, Mary will
remain beneath the Cross (cf. Jn 19:25-27); later, at the hour
of Pentecost, it will be they who gather around her as they wait
for the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14).
42.
The lives of the saints are not limited to their earthly
biographies but also include their being and working in God
after death. In the saints one thing becomes clear: those who
draw near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become
truly close to them. In no one do we see this more clearly than
in Mary. The words addressed by the crucified Lord to his
disciple—to John and through him to all disciples of Jesus:
“Behold, your mother!” (Jn 19:27)—are fulfilled anew in every
generation. Mary has truly become the Mother of all believers.
Men and women of every time and place have recourse to her
motherly kindness and her virginal purity and grace, in all
their needs and aspirations, their joys and sorrows, their
moments of loneliness and their common endeavours. They
constantly experience the gift of her goodness and the unfailing
love which she pours out from the depths of her heart. The
testimonials of gratitude, offered to her from every continent
and culture, are a recognition of that pure love which is not
self- seeking but simply benevolent. At the same time, the
devotion of the faithful shows an infallible intuition of how
such love is possible: it becomes so as a result of the most
intimate union with God, through which the soul is totally
pervaded by him—a condition which enables those who have drunk
from the fountain of God's love to become in their turn a
fountain from which “flow rivers of living water” (Jn 7:38).
Mary, Virgin and Mother, shows us what love is and whence it
draws its origin and its constantly renewed power. To her we
entrust the Church and her mission in the service of love:
Holy
Mary, Mother of God,
you
have given the world its true light,
Jesus, your Son – the Son of God.
You
abandoned yourself completely
to
God's call
and
thus became a wellspring
of
the goodness which flows forth from him.
Show
us Jesus. Lead us to him.
Teach us to know and love him,
so
that we too can become
capable of true love
and
be fountains of living water
in
the midst of a thirsting world.
- -
-
Given in Rome, at Saint Peter's, on 25 December, the Solemnity
of the Nativity of the Lord, in the year 2005, the first of my
Pontificate.
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
- -
-
[1]
Cf. Jenseits von Gut und Böse, IV, 168.
[2]
X, 69.
[3]
Cf. R. Descartes, Śuvres, ed. V. Cousin, vol. 12, Paris 1824,
pp. 95ff.
[4]
II, 5: SCh 381, 196.
[5]
Ibid., 198.
[6]
Cf. Metaphysics, XII, 7.
[7]
Cf. Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, who in his treatise The Divine
Names, IV, 12-14: PG 3, 709-713 calls God both eros and agape.
[8]
Plato, Symposium, XIV-XV, 189c-192d.
[9]
Sallust, De coniuratione Catilinae, XX, 4.
[10]
Cf. Saint Augustine, Confessions, III, 6, 11: CCL 27, 32.
[11]
De Trinitate, VIII, 8, 12: CCL 50, 287.
[12]
Cf. I Apologia, 67: PG 6, 429.
[13]
Cf. Apologeticum, 39, 7: PL 1, 468.
[14]
Ep. ad Rom., Inscr: PG 5, 801.
[15]
Cf. Saint Ambrose, De officiis ministrorum, II, 28, 140: PL 16,
141.
[16]
Cf. Ep. 83: J. Bidez, L'Empereur Julien. Śuvres complčtes, Paris
19602, v. I, 2a, p. 145.
[17]
Cf. Congregation for Bishops, Directory for the Pastoral
Ministry of Bishops Apostolorum Successores (22 February 2004),
194, Vatican City 2004, p. 213.
[18]
De Civitate Dei, IV, 4: CCL 47, 102.
[19]
Cf. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World
Gaudium et Spes, 36.
[20]
Cf. Congregation for Bishops, Directory for the Pastoral
Ministry of Bishops Apostolorum Successores (22 February 2004),
197, Vatican City 2004, p. 217.
[21]
John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles
Laici (30 December 1988), 42: AAS 81 (1989), 472.
[22]
Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note
on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in
Political Life (24 November 2002), 1: L'Osservatore Romano,
English edition, 22 January 2003, p. 5.
[23]
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1939.
[24]
Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity Apostolicam Actuositatem,
8.
[25]
Ibid., 14.
[26]
Cf. Congregation for Bishops, Directory for the Pastoral
Ministry of Bishops Apostolorum Successores (22 February 2004),
195, Vatican City 2004, pp. 214-216.
[27]
Cf. John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Christifideles Laici (30 December 1988), 41: AAS 81 (1989),
470-472.
[28]
Cf. No. 32: AAS 80 (1988), 556.
[29]
No. 43: AAS 87 (1995), 946.
[30]
Cf. Congregation for Bishops, Directory for the Pastoral
Ministry of Bishops Apostolorum Successores (22 February 2004),
196, Vatican City 2004, p. 216.
[31]
Cf. Pontificale Romanum, De ordinatione episcopi, 43.
[32]
Cf. can. 394; Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, can. 203.
[33]
Cf. Nos. 193-198: pp. 212-219.
[34]
Ibid., 194: pp. 213-214.
[35]
Sermo 52, 16: PL 38, 360.
[36]
Cf. Sulpicius Severus, Vita Sancti Martini, 3, 1-3: SCh 133,
256-258.
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-
©
Copyright 2005 – Libreria Editrice Vaticana
