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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 |
