Sister Hughes, former U.S. provincial and a fellow at the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at St. John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota, wrote her piece at the invitation of the St. Cloud Visitor. The article appeared in the February 9 issue of the Visitor, the newspaper of the Diocese of St. Cloud, Minn.

A few reflections on Deus Caritas Est

Kathleen Hughes, RSCJ

The first encyclical of a Pope is always awaited with great interest.  The document will give a glimpse of the man, his theological preoccupations, his pastoral sensitivity, his teaching style, and the general direction of his papacy.  It will set a tone and lay the groundwork for his future writing and speaking.  In the case of Benedict XVI, a brilliant theologian with a reputation for rigorous, perhaps even inflexible, doctrinal and disciplinary oversight of the church as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, there was even greater anticipation.

Deus Caritas Est has been a happy surprise in every way both for what it contains and what it does not.  It is a two part document which joins Benedict’s original reflections on the meaning of Christian love to an unpublished work of John Paul II on charitable organizations.  It is the first half of the encyclical, then, which best reveals Benedict’s mind and heart.

“I wish in my first Encyclical,” he states, “to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others.”  Readers will find his reflections on love reminiscent of C. S. Lewis’ The Four Loves, for, like Lewis, Benedict distinguishes eros (sexual love), philia (the love of friendship) and agape (that selfless love to which all other loves must tend).  Benedict moves from these more philosophical reflections to the heart of Biblical faith:  it is Christ himself who gives flesh and blood to these concepts for it is Christ who most perfectly embodies complete and selfless love and reveals to us the Heart of God.

God’s way of loving as discovered in Christ is, for us, the measure of our love for one another.  Benedict suggests that we contemplate the pierced side of Christ, love poured out unto death, in order to realize and embrace the path our own life and love must take.  Further, he names participation in the eucharist as the moment when we join our lives to Christ and enter into his self-gift for the life of the world.  At the eucharist we commit ourselves to that “open-ended…never finished and complete” process of laying down our lives in love.

The second part of the Encyclical offers the practical consequences of these teachings for the community of faith, called to be a witness before the world of the love God lavishes on us.  To continue Christ’s saving work and to be the embodiment of God’s love, the church must exercise the ministry of charity to those in need both within and beyond the community, but it does so not as one more philanthropic organization alongside other social agencies.  The church’s service of charity is distinct in three ways:  it is a response to immediate needs; it is independent of parties and ideologies; and it is practiced freely and without concurrent proselytizing.  “A pure and generous love is the best witness to the God in whom we believe and by whom we are driven to love.”

All in all this first Encyclical of Benedict XVI is an inspired statement of the absolute centrality of love – God’s perfect love embodied in human form in Christ, and the love the community of Jesus’ followers must embody as his faithful disciples.  In it Benedict reveals himself as a pastor and a teacher—with a bit of humor thrown in for good measure.  The text is decidedly simpler and briefer than the works of his predecessor.  It addresses a universal human longing and need.  It challenges but does not chide.  And finally, it invites each one of us to deeper reflection on the demands of love so that we might, individually and corporately, become “fountains of living water in the midst of a thirsting world.”

Kathleen Hughes, RSCJ, is currently a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research at St. John’s University.  She was Professor of Word and Worship at the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago for nineteen years before being named United States Provincial of her order, the Religious of the Sacred Heart.  She has just completed six years in leadership.