Deus Caritas Est

Introduction
Saint John offers a kind of summary of the Christian life: “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us”. 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.

Purpose
1) 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.
2) 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

“love” has become one of the most frequently used and misused of words,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. 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. counterfeit divinization of eros actually strips it of its dignity and dehumanizes it. An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in “ecstasy” towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man. eros needs to be disciplined and purified
love promises infinity, eternity—a reality far greater and totally other than our everyday existence.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.
Man is truly himself when his body and soul are intimately united; 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.
Eros, reduced to pure “sex”, has become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity.
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 looks to the eternal
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.
God loves, and his love may certainly be called eros, yet it is also totally agape.
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.
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.
Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage 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. 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. Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. 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. 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,


PART II CARITAS THE PRACTICE OF LOVE BY THE CHURCH AS A “COMMUNITY OF LOVE"

The entire activity of the Church is an expression of a love that seeks the integral good of man: his evangeization and to promote man in various arenas of life and human activity
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 Church cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the Sacraments and the Word.
charity is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being.
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.

charity must animate the entire lives of the lay faithful; our ability to know almost instantly about the needs of others challenges us to share their situation and their difficulties. both material and spiritual.
a true humanism, acknowledges that man is made in the image of God and wants to help him to live in a way consonant with that dignity. Those who work for the Church's charitable organizations must dedicate themselves to others with heartfelt concern, enabling them to experience the richness of their humanity
One does not make the world more human by refusing to act humanely here and now.. 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.
Charity, furthermore, cannot be used as a means of engaging in what is nowadays considered proselytism...But this does not mean that charitable activity must somehow leave God and Christ aside...Often the deepest cause of suffering is the very absence of God.
Whoever loves Christ loves the Church, and desires the Church to be increasingly the image and instrument of the love which flows from Christ.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.
In all humility we will do what we can, and in all humility we will entrust the rest to the Lord.
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.
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. Love is possible, and we are able to practise it because we are created in the image of God.

Conclusion
The saints are the true bearers of light within history, for they are men and women of faith, hope and love...Mary's greatness consists in the fact that she wants to magnify God, not herself...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. 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: