The Centrality of love in the
Christian Faith
In the Encyclical Letter Deus Caritas Est Pope Benedict weaves together and gives harmonious expression in his own language and style to some of the central themes of Vatican II. It is refreshing to read back nearly 40 years to the young theologian Ratzinger writing some of the chapters for the commentary on Dei Verbum in the Vorgrimler edition of the Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II[1] and hear the same resonance and vigour expressed in his first Encyclical.
I would suggest that “divine” love is offered by the encyclical as the hermeneutical key to understanding the whole mystery of the Christian faith: who is God; who is man; what is the meaning of his life; what is the Church; what is her mission in the world.
The mystery of God reveals the mystery of Man
the centrality of love in the
mystery of god
In his commentary on article 2 of Dei Verbum Ratzinger comments that revelation is basically a dialogue. The language used by Dei Verbum is dialogical: God “speaks to friends”, God “lives among them”, he “invites and takes them into fellowship”.[2] Pope Benedict states that 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.” (1)[3] To give expression to this he places before us the daily dialogical reality of the pious Jew who in praying the Shema expresses what is at 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” (Dt 6:4-5). Pope Benedict later in the encyclical will describe the Bible as “the love-story” in which God “comes towards us, he seeks to win our hearts..”. (17)
In this “love-story” God reveals himself to be a passionate lover of man. Hosea and Ezekiel do not shy away from using boldly erotic images of marriage in describing the love of God for Israel. The erotic is united with agape in this love of God for Israel, but it goes beyond being only gift. It is also a forgiving love. Pope Benedict describes this dimension of love as being where “it turns God against himself, his love against his justice.” (10) Instead of repudiation man for his “adultery” against God he re-enters into a loving dialogue with Israel, “How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel!” (Hosea 11:8).
This revelation of God as the Lover of humanity, who turns against his own justice for love’s sake reaches its fullness in Jesus Christ. Pope Benedict observes that the “real novelty of the New Testament” lies not in new concepts and expressions of who God is, but “in the figure of Christ himself, who gives flesh and blood to those concepts - an unprecedented realism.” (12) In this love-story of the history of salvation God, in Jesus Christ, searches for the “stray sheep’, “a suffering and lost humanity.” (12) The depth to which God is willing to love and the definition of love is revealed in the Cross. Here God turns against himself and “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. Jn 19:37), we can understand the starting-point of this Encyclical Letter: “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8).” (12)
the centrality of love in the
mystery of man as the image of god
The revelation contained in biblical faith offers the novelty of perceiving man in view of the revelation of the mystery of God: God is Lover of humanity. Human philosophy cannot attain to this truth. Pope Benedict notes that Aristotle at the pinnacle of Greek philosophy arrived at the truth that God is “for every being an object of desire and love – and as the object of love this divinity moves the world – but in itself lacks nothing and does not love: it is solely the object of love.” (9) According to biblical faith God as Lover is the image in which man is created. The solitude of Adam, the first man, is gift from God to Adam. It places in the very depth of the nature of man the desire to transcend himself and become a seeker of the other. He is called to become a lover like his Creator. Only in the two, Adam and Eve, man and woman, being one in love is humanity completed. (11) It is in this community of love that the monogamous marriage “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.” (11)
What reveals to man his deepest nature is not arrived at by philosophy. It is in the “love-relationship between God and Israel” (9) that the gift of the Torah is given. It is this which opens “Israel’s eyes to man’s true nature” and shows “her the path leading to true humanism.” In faithfully responding to the Torah written in the depth of his heart man “comes to experience himself as loved by God, and discovers joy in truth and righteousness.” This opens man to a dialogical response to God’s loving gift: “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). (9)
Pope Benedict in his own language and style beautifully expresses the central anthropological and Christological theme found in article 22 of Gaudium et Spes which states that “Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling.” Only in the revelation of Jesus Christ, especially in the Cross, and in contemplating his pierced side, is the full mystery of the dignity and vocation of man revealed: man called to be a lover in the dimension of the Cross. It is from here that man sets out on the journey opened up by Christ, on “a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.” (5) It is “an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards authentic self-discovery and indeed discovery of God.” (6) It is the journey “which leads through the Cross to the Resurrection: the path of the grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies, in this way bearing much fruit.” (6) This “love-story between God and man” (17) leads to a communion of will, thought and sentiment so that God’s will is no longer an alien will imposed from outside. Man is called to become holy. It is the saint, who has taken on the desires, the mind and the will of Christ, who becomes a lover in the dimension of the Cross towards the neighbour, even the enemy, without effort. “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.” (18)
Pope Benedict closes the first half of the encyclical by stating that this love which must be shared with others makes love grow and unifies humanity. It is a process that “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).” (18) The overcoming of divisions between people does not happen in a vacuum. This leads us into the second section, that of the mission of the Church which is called to give signs of love and unity which draws humanity towards unity with God.
The Centrality of Love in the Mystery of the Church and the Eucharist
At the heart of the encyclical Pope Benedict invites us to contemplate the pierced side of Christ. Here we enter into the mystery that God is love. “In this contemplation the Christian discovers the path along which his life and love must move.” (12) This love, defined in the flesh and blood of Jesus, is the source and the summit of our loving. The communion and unity, the overcoming of all barriers and divisions, which humanity is called to because God is love is made possible through the pierced side of Christ. “Jesus gave this act of oblation an enduring presence through his institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper,” writes Pope Benedict. (13) The Eucharist becomes the source of communion (koinonia). Of its nature the Eucharist has a social character as “union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself… Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians.” (14) The centrality of love in the mystery of the Church has its full expression in the Eucharist. Pope Benedict writes, ““Worship” itself, Eucharistic communion, includes the reality of both of being loved and of loving the others in turn. A Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented.” (14)
The Centrality of Love in the Mission of the Church in the World
It is the love of Christ experienced in the Eucharist that urges on Christians in their service of charity in the world. It is a love “that seeks the integral good of man.” (19) This activity of Christians flows out of their prophetic, priestly and kingly baptismal identity. It gives rise to the tripod of activity that is essential to the very life of the Church and each Christian: proclamation of the word of God, celebration of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and of the service of charity.
Pope Benedict makes reference to this tripod of activities six times in the encyclical in numbers 17, 19, 20, 22, 25 and 32). The last three references are used to emphasis that the service of charity has equal standing with the other two as being essential to the nature of the Church. Why this emphasis?
With a broad sweep of the brush he outlines how diakonia has had organised structures within the Church from the beginning and how these have expanded into well organised works of charity over the centuries and into the present. He also mentions twice the attempt of the emperor Justin the Apostate (†363) to replicate these organised systems of charity. Emperor Justine the Apostate desired to, at the very least, neutralise the attractiveness of the Church and re-establish paganism as the religion of the Roman Empire.
The first mention of this in number 24 is to give emphasis to how even the pagans were impressed by these organised charitable works of the Church and understood that they must replicate them if they were to compete with the attractive moral force of Christianity. The second mention of emperor Justin the Apostate comes in number 31. This occurs after Pope Benedict has briefly analysed the situation of the world since the nineteen century in the area of social and political changes and the Church’s response in its social teaching and practice.
The emphasis that the service of charity having equal standing to the activity of proclaiming the Word and God and of the celebration of the sacraments and the two-fold mention of emperor Justin the Apostate would indicate that the Pope desires to at the least re-affirm the Church in its commitment to organised services of charity. This concern arises out of the prominence of the State as having become, on the whole, the normal expression of government found throughout the world today. The State has primarily arisen from Christian roots and so has inherited systems whereby social welfare for the citizens is, on the whole, expected to be provided for them in some form or another by the State. These can unwittingly, or knowingly, lead to new threats of the neutralisation of the attractiveness of the Church by the State. This can occur through the State replicating by its welfare systems what had its origins in the organised services of charity of the Church. It can lead to inertia among Christians.
Pope Benedict acknowledges that the just ordering of society should be left to the State and is not the domain of the Church. The Church through her social teaching does the service to the State of helping to “form consciences in political life and to stimulate greater insight into the authentic requirements of justice.” (28) He goes on to specify that “(t)he direct duty to work for a just ordering of society, on the other hand, is proper to the lay faithful.” (29)
The Church does not set itself up against the State in the area of social welfare. In fact the State and Church working together while respecting what is distinct to each, “has led to the birth and the growth of many forms of cooperation between State and Church agencies, which have borne fruit.” (30)
What is important is for the Church not to lose sight of what is essential to her nature. In this regard the Pope writes:
“The Church’s charitable organisations, 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 practicing charity as an organised 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.” (29)
Love has centrality of place in the Christian faith. The essential elements of this Christian charity are outlined in the encyclical as threefold: a) It is “first of all the simple response to immediate needs and specific situations.” b) It is “independent of parties and ideologies,” coming from a person who has contemplate the pierced side of Christ and so has a “heart which sees.” c) It is free, it does not operate as a strategy with the second intention of proselytism, but it is carried out with unabashed “credible witness to Christ.” (31)
This distinct type of love can only be lived in humility, which comes from contemplating the place Christ has taken on the Cross. He has taken the lowest place. Believing in this love of Christ in which Jesus did not consider himself superior to us sinners, but served life to us unto death, Christians do not consider themselves superior to others. They discover that they can love others without effort because it is the love of Christ urging them on. (36)
Believing that God has loved us first, Christians sustain their service to charity through the continual loving dialogue of prayer. In the encyclical Pope Benedict reminds us of the recent experience of the heroic service of charity carried out by Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. She has given living witness “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. (36)