ENCYCLICAL LETTER
DEUS CARITAS EST
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS
PRIESTS AND DEACONS
MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS
AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON CHRISTIAN LOVE
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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