God is love

By Tony Staley
Compass Editor

	Related article: • Definitely worth reading     Document is down-to-earth and readable

Pope Benedict XVI offers an insightful look at God and what it means to be Christian in his first encyclical. "Deus Caritas Est" ("God Is Love") basically develops the ideas that God is love, what love is and how it should affect the lives of all Christians.

Media reports have focused on the contrast he made between eros ("worldly" love) and agape (love grounded in and shaped by faith). What some reports skipped is his assertion that the two can never be completely separated. Thus, while eros is often seen as non-Christian love and agape as Christian love, if taken to extremes "the essence of Christianity would be detached from the vital relations fundamental to human existence."

Indeed, both eros (receiving love) and agape (giving love) are important because the human person "cannot always give; he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift."

In the end, he said, love is a single reality and eros and agape are different, necessary dimensions of love. For example, the pope said, "God loves, and his love may certainly be called eros, yet it is also totally agape."

Eros leads men and women to God's great gift, marriage, Pope Benedict said. God further showed his love for humans through the incarnation of Jesus and allows us in the Eucharist to become one with the Lord and with everyone else "to whom he gives himself.... Communion draws me out of myself toward him and thus also toward unity with all other Christians." Eucharistic communion, then, "includes the reality both of being loved and of loving others in return."

Because of that, each individual believer, parish, diocese and the church universal must practice charity - the love of neighbor - both locally and globally, the pope said. And, he added, "Within the community of believers there can never be room for a poverty that denies anyone what is needed for a dignified life."

The efforts of workers at church 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," he said. They need to give of themselves, acting out of love of neighbor.

It is also important, he said, that Christian charity be offered as free gift, not as a way to proselytize. At the same time, our charitable deeds must be tied to prayer.

The pope also said that while it is up to the state, not the church, to build a just society, "the church is duty bound to offer ... her own specific contribution toward understanding the requirements of justice and achieving them politically."

Truly this is a document to prayerfully ponder and put lovingly into action.