Deus Caritas Est (DCE): 1-6

Our holy and learned pope, Benedict XVI, has, at long last, delivered his first encyclical letter: Deus (God) Caritas (love) Est (is): God is love. A pope’s first encyclical letter is often taken to be a kind of keynote address to the Church, charting the course, expositing the doctrine that may well characterize all that will follow in his pontificate. It thereby portends great significance for our future. The subject of our holy father’s inaugural letter aims to instruct us on a matter very fundamental and profound, indeed, the most essential matter in our Christian faith: the very nature of the life of the Blessed Trinity. And in the most blest light of that reality, he hopes to illuminate the nature of that / charity / which has been infused into our hearts by the Holy Spirit through holy baptism. But here we are anticipating somewhat and must begin–as the pope does–with some basic points and clarifications of this subject, of love.

In the course of succeeding weeks–even well into Lent–we will meditate in filial communion with our pope on the central mystery which is divine love.

Christians have a unique and privileged view into the inner life of God from what’s told to us in the Scripture: "God / is / love, / and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him." This pithy statement draws a picture for us, both of God and mankind. God is love: a puzzling, intriguing statement that says something about God and yet hides a great deal. Love is a very broad thing and the word doesn’t immediately seem to help us get a better picture of God in our minds. So, we turn to another line from the same First Epistle of St. John where we read, "We have come to believe in God’s love." Here we can grasp something. When we are believers, we don’t only sign up for a religion, but we’re made to face a real Person, God (actually, of course, I should say real Persons). And this is a life-changing discovery. Now, whether we choose to say it this way or not, when we come face to face with God, it’s in order to love Him, not just to meet Him or have knowledge about Him. And so, the first commandment Jesus gave us is to love God (with all our heart, soul and might), and then His second commandment trails immediately behind: to love our neighbor as ourselves. This twofold commandment supplies the Pope with the basic division of his letter into two parts, as we shall see. It’s because people in our day have a cloudy or even erroneous image of God in their minds that the Pope decided to write about this topic. His secondary reason for writing it was that humanity needs what he calls "renewed energy" in their commitment to love God. And so, he begins his first part.

Now, I’ll bet that everyone here has heard a sermon that tells us that ‘there are different ways that we use the word love’ and then heard some examples of those usages. The Pope himself doesn’t miss his chance here either. But he quickly comes to say that among these many usages of the word, one meaning of ‘love’ stands apart. It’s the love between man and woman, that is, the love of human beings, creatures of body and soul, who are in search for happiness.

Now, when the Pope clarifies his use of the word love, he has recourse to two basic Greek words for love. This may sound like a school lesson, but it’s necessary because, as we readily recognize, people sometimes use the same word for a sinful act between people and use it again for the most holy act towards God. Surely that’s remarkable! But we have in the Greek language (the primary language of the Bible for us) two different words that, in English, are both translated as ‘love’ (you see the difficulty). The Greek word eros gives us our English word ‘erotic.’ The NT never uses this word eros and thus avoids a confusion (for those who can read Greek), on what God means by love. The specifically Christian, NT word for love is not eros but agápe (this word agápe is not up for discussion in this sermon, however).

Some important thinkers, modern philosophers (and their type are still around, as you will recognize) have attacked Christianity because they said that it is opposed to eros (sensual human love) and that it dreamed up in its place some vaguely spiritual kind of love, agápe. This is still the cry of those who complain that the Church is always ‘down’ on human love. But, the Pope asks, is that really so? He then reviews something that anyone educated in the classical writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans will recognize, namely, that eros, sensual love, was regarded as a kind of intoxication, what Plato called "a divine madness," the overwhelming power of ecstacy. (Even if you haven’t read any of those old classic books, you get the same idea from novels, movies and music, the idea of the vehement driving force of passion that we call love, eros.) This frenzied drive can be so dominating that it can easily be confused, as it was in many pagan religions, with something divine. Paganism with its many gods, if you did not know, made this fundamental error–inspired by the devil certainly–that passionate indulgence was a good thing, blest by the gods. You have to get this point in order to see why the OT was so adamantly opposed to allowing the Jews to intermix with the Gentiles: for they were an immoral people whose many gods (who were actually demons) induced them to immoral behavior (as if vice needed any encouragement from religion!). This, or course, was a degradation both of religion / and of man, who had been created by God with the nobility of a rational nature. Here was see the effects of the Fall of man, that mankind suffers from an imbalance, an impairment of his nature. The true religion of the OT insisted on the belief in one God who required a discipline and a purity of conduct from humanity. But this reasoned, controlled living did not mean that eros, sensual love was forbidden (as some critics of our faith have stupidly claimed). Putting the erotic element in its rightful place, in the right context, in service to both mankind and to God, allows it to reach out to the ultimate experience of happiness that will be found in heaven.

It may sound odd, in a way, to speak of eros and our holy and pure religion as related things. We know of the great sins that can be committed through impurity, for example. But in the language of the bible and of the Church, the ‘yearning element’ in human love is a symbolic stretching out to grasp infinity, eternity. But a forever-kind-of-love can’t be obtained through human love; it can only be achieved in God. In fact, we will not ever get to obtain that eternal satisfaction if we abuse the eros. Our human nature has not only body, but also reason, which is a royal commanding function over our body so that it will not make us beastly and thus debased, cheapened, and selfish people.

So far, the subject matter has been the idea of love, but–as you will recognize–this is an abstraction. It’s too wide and vague a term because the word lacks an object. Love of the kind we are speaking is always towards another person, seeking the good of someone who is loved, even to the point of sacrifice. When a particular person is in view, love then takes shape, has definition, a focus. And when this happens, it loves exclusively (this one person only) and it wants to love forever.

At this point we will have to leave the Pope’s thought, to take it up again. But I want you to note here that even in the common experience of human love, the feeling, the desire for ‘forever’ is inevitably introduced. And this stretching outward, so to speak, is a signal that human love, rightly considered, is an indication that we’re meant to exist beyond this mortal life and into an eternal state of love. This wont be achieved by human means alone, and it certainly wont be attained by sinful indulgence in what is sometimes miscalled love. Rather, this is truly something divine, and we can get it now through Jesus Christ and our Catholic faith.

But I’m almost giving away end of the story, and we will have a longer way to go with the Pope to see the wonderful course of his thought on the Love which is God.