|
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
Click here for
Fr. Frank's commentary on this encyclical
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 ahabà, 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 Acts of the Apostles
(cf. 2:42-44): today as in the past, the Church as God's
family must be a place where help is given and received, and
at the same time, a place where people are also prepared to
serve those outside her confines who are in need of help. In
the rite of episcopal ordination, prior to the act of
consecration itself, the candidate must respond to several
questions which express the essential elements of his office
and recall the duties of his future ministry. He promises
expressly to be, in the Lord's name, welcoming and merciful
to the poor and to all those in need of consolation and
assistance.[31] The Code of Canon Law, in the
canons on the ministry of the Bishop, does not expressly
mention charity as a specific sector of episcopal activity,
but speaks in general terms of the Bishop's responsibility
for coordinating the different works of the apostolate with
due regard for their proper character.[32] Recently, however, the Directory
for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops explored more
specifically the duty of charity as a responsibility
incumbent upon the whole Church and upon each Bishop in his
Diocese,[33] and it emphasized that the exercise of
charity is an action of the Church as such, and that, like
the ministry of Word and Sacrament, it too has been an
essential part of her mission from the very beginning.[34]
33. With regard to the personnel who carry out
the Church's charitable activity on the practical level, the
essential has already been said: they must not be inspired
by ideologies aimed at improving the world, but should
rather be guided by the faith which works through love (cf.
Gal
5:6). Consequently, more than anything, they must be persons
moved by Christ's love, persons whose hearts Christ has
conquered with his love, awakening within them a love of
neighbour. The criterion inspiring their activity should be
Saint Paul's statement in the Second Letter to the
Corinthians: “the love of Christ urges us on” (5:14).
The consciousness that, in Christ, God has given himself for
us, even unto death, must inspire us to live no longer for
ourselves but for him, and, with him, for others. Whoever
loves Christ loves the Church, and desires the Church to be
increasingly the image and instrument of the love which
flows from Christ. The personnel of every Catholic
charitable organization want to work with the Church and
therefore with the Bishop, so that the love of God can
spread throughout the world. 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.
34. Interior openness to the Catholic dimension
of the Church cannot fail to dispose charity workers to work
in harmony with other organizations in serving various forms
of need, but in a way that respects what is distinctive
about the service which Christ requested of his disciples.
Saint Paul, in his hymn to charity (cf. 1 Cor 13),
teaches us that it is always more than activity alone: “If I
give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned,
but do not have love, I gain nothing” (v. 3). This hymn must
be the
Magna Carta of all ecclesial service; it sums up all the
reflections on love which I have offered throughout this
Encyclical Letter. Practical activity will always be
insufficient, unless it visibly expresses a love for man, a
love nourished by an encounter with Christ. My deep personal
sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a
sharing of my very self with them: if my gift is not to
prove a source of humiliation, I must give to others not
only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be
personally present in my gift.
35. This proper way of serving others also leads
to humility. The one who serves does not consider himself
superior to the one served, however miserable his situation
at the moment may be. Christ took the lowest place in the
world—the Cross—and by this radical humility he redeemed us
and constantly comes to our aid. Those who are in a position
to help others will realize that in doing so they themselves
receive help; being able to help others is no merit or
achievement of their own. This duty is a grace. The more we
do for others, the more we understand and can appropriate
the words of Christ: “We are useless servants” (Lk
17:10). We recognize that we are not acting on the basis of
any superiority or greater personal efficiency, but because
the Lord has graciously enabled us to do so. There are times
when the burden of need and our own limitations might tempt
us to become discouraged. But precisely then we are helped
by the knowledge that, in the end, we are only instruments
in the Lord's hands; and this knowledge frees us from the
presumption of thinking that we alone are personally
responsible for building a better world. In all humility we
will do what we can, and in all humility we will entrust the
rest to the Lord. It is God who governs the world, not we.
We offer him our service only to the extent that we can, and
for as long as he grants us the strength. To do all we can
with what strength we have, however, is the task which keeps
the good servant of Jesus Christ always at work: “The love
of Christ urges us on” (2 Cor 5:14).
36. When we consider the immensity of others'
needs, we can, on the one hand, be driven towards an
ideology that would aim at doing what God's governance of
the world apparently cannot: fully resolving every problem.
Or we can be tempted to give in to inertia, since it would
seem that in any event nothing can be accomplished. At such
times, a living relationship with Christ is decisive if we
are to keep on the right path, without falling into an
arrogant contempt for man, something not only unconstructive
but actually destructive, or surrendering to a resignation
which would prevent us from being guided by love in the
service of others. Prayer, as a means of drawing ever new
strength from Christ, is concretely and urgently needed.
People who pray are not wasting their time, even though the
situation appears desperate and seems to call for action
alone. Piety does not undermine the struggle against the
poverty of our neighbours, however extreme. In the example
of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta we have a clear illustration
of the fact that 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. In her letter for Lent 1996, Blessed Teresa wrote
to her lay co-workers: “We need this deep connection with
God in our daily life. How can we obtain it? By prayer”.
37. It is time to reaffirm the importance of
prayer in the face of the activism and the growing
secularism of many Christians engaged in charitable work.
Clearly, the Christian who prays does not claim to be able
to change God's plans or correct what he has foreseen.
Rather, he seeks an encounter with the Father of Jesus
Christ, asking God to be present with the consolation of the
Spirit to him and his work. A personal relationship with God
and an abandonment to his will can prevent man from being
demeaned and save him from falling prey to the teaching of
fanaticism and terrorism. An authentically religious
attitude prevents man from presuming to judge God, accusing
him of allowing poverty and failing to have compassion for
his creatures. When people claim to build a case against God
in defence of man, on whom can they depend when human
activity proves powerless?
38. Certainly Job could complain before God
about the presence of incomprehensible and apparently
unjustified suffering in the world. In his pain he cried
out: “Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might
come even to his seat! ... I would learn what he would
answer me, and understand what he would say to me. Would he
contend with me in the greatness of his power? ... Therefore
I am terrified at his presence; when I consider, I am in
dread of him. God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has
terrified me” (23:3, 5-6, 15-16). Often we cannot understand
why God refrains from intervening. Yet he does not prevent
us from crying out, like Jesus on the Cross: “My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). We should
continue asking this question in prayerful dialogue before
his face: “Lord, holy and true, how long will it be?” (Rev
6:10). It is Saint Augustine who gives us faith's answer to
our sufferings: “Si comprehendis, non est Deus”—”if
you understand him, he is not God.” [35] Our protest is not meant to challenge
God, or to suggest that error, weakness or indifference can
be found in him. For the believer, it is impossible to
imagine that God is powerless or that “perhaps he is asleep”
(cf. 1 Kg 18:27). Instead, 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. Even in their
bewilderment and failure to understand the world around
them, Christians continue to believe in the “goodness and
loving kindness of God” (Tit 3:4). Immersed like
everyone else in the dramatic complexity of historical
events, they remain unshakably certain that God is our
Father and loves us, even when his silence remains
incomprehensible.
39. Faith, hope and charity go together. Hope is
practised through the virtue of patience, which continues to
do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through
the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and
trusts him even at times of darkness. Faith tells us that
God has given his Son for our sakes and gives us the
victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love! It
thus transforms our impatience and our doubts into the sure
hope that God holds the world in his hands and that, as the
dramatic imagery of the end of the Book of Revelation points
out, in spite of all darkness he ultimately triumphs in
glory. Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in the
pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love.
Love is the light—and in the end, the only light—that can
always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage
needed to keep living and working. Love is possible, and we
are able to practise it because we are created in the image
of God. To experience love and in this way to cause the
light of God to enter into the world—this is the invitation
I would like to extend with the present Encyclical.
CONCLUSION
40. Finally, let us consider the saints, who
exercised charity in an exemplary way. Our thoughts turn
especially to Martin of Tours († 397), the soldier who
became a monk and a bishop: he is almost like an icon,
illustrating the irreplaceable value of the individual
testimony to charity. At the gates of Amiens, Martin gave
half of his cloak to a poor man: Jesus himself, that night,
appeared to him in a dream wearing that cloak, confirming
the permanent validity of the Gospel saying: “I was naked
and you clothed me ... as you did it to one of the least of
these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:36, 40).[36] Yet in the history of the Church, how
many other testimonies to charity could be quoted! In
particular, the entire monastic movement, from its origins
with Saint Anthony the Abbot († 356), expresses an immense
service of charity towards neighbour. In his encounter “face
to face” with the God who is Love, the monk senses the
impelling need to transform his whole life into service of
neighbour, in addition to service of God. This explains the
great emphasis on hospitality, refuge and care of the infirm
in the vicinity of the monasteries. It also explains the
immense initiatives of human welfare and Christian
formation, aimed above all at the very poor, who became the
object of care firstly for the monastic and mendicant
orders, and later for the various male and female religious
institutes all through the history of the Church. The
figures of saints such as Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of
Loyola, John of God, Camillus of Lellis, Vincent de Paul,
Louise de Marillac, Giuseppe B. Cottolengo, John Bosco,
Luigi Orione, Teresa of Calcutta to name but a few—stand out
as lasting models of social charity for all people of good
will. The saints are the true bearers of light within
history, for they are men and women of faith, hope and love.
41. Outstanding among the saints is Mary, Mother
of the Lord and mirror of all holiness. In the Gospel of
Luke we find her engaged in a service of charity to her
cousin Elizabeth, with whom she remained for “about three
months” (1:56) so as to assist her in the final phase of her
pregnancy. “Magnificat anima mea Dominum”, she says
on the occasion of that visit, “My soul magnifies the Lord”
(Lk 1:46). In these words she expresses her whole
programme of life: not setting herself at the centre, but
leaving space for God, who is encountered both in prayer and
in service of neighbour—only then does goodness enter the
world. Mary's greatness consists in the fact that she wants
to magnify God, not herself. She is lowly: her only desire
is to be the handmaid of the Lord (cf. Lk 1:38, 48).
She knows that she will only contribute to the salvation of
the world if, rather than carrying out her own projects, she
places herself completely at the disposal of God's
initiatives. Mary is a woman of hope: only because she
believes in God's promises and awaits the salvation of
Israel, can the angel visit her and call her to the decisive
service of these promises. Mary is a woman of faith:
“Blessed are you who believed”, Elizabeth says to her (cf.
Lk 1:45). The Magnificat—a portrait, so to speak,
of her soul—is entirely woven from threads of Holy
Scripture, threads drawn from the Word of God. Here we see
how completely at home Mary is with the Word of God, with
ease she moves in and out of it. She speaks and thinks with
the Word of God; the Word of God becomes her word, and her
word issues from the Word of God. Here we see how her
thoughts are attuned to the thoughts of God, how her will is
one with the will of God. Since Mary is completely imbued
with the Word of God, she is able to become the Mother of
the Word Incarnate. Finally, Mary is a woman who loves. How
could it be otherwise? As a believer who in faith thinks
with God's thoughts and wills with God's will, she cannot
fail to be a woman who loves. We sense this in her quiet
gestures, as recounted by the infancy narratives in the
Gospel. We see it in the delicacy with which she recognizes
the need of the spouses at Cana and makes it known to Jesus.
We see it in the humility with which she recedes into the
background during Jesus' public life, knowing that the Son
must establish a new family and that the Mother's hour will
come only with the Cross, which will be Jesus' true hour
(cf. Jn 2:4; 13:1). When the disciples flee, Mary
will remain beneath the Cross (cf. Jn 19:25-27);
later, at the hour of Pentecost, it will be they who gather
around her as they wait for the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts
1:14).
42. The lives of the saints are not limited to
their earthly biographies but also include their being and
working in God after death. 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. In no one do we see
this more clearly than in Mary. The words addressed by the
crucified Lord to his disciple—to John and through him to
all disciples of Jesus: “Behold, your mother!” (Jn
19:27)—are fulfilled anew in every generation. Mary has truly
become the Mother of all believers. Men and women of every
time and place have recourse to her motherly kindness and
her virginal purity and grace, in all their needs and
aspirations, their joys and sorrows, their moments of
loneliness and their common endeavours. They constantly
experience the gift of her goodness and the unfailing love
which she pours out from the depths of her heart. The
testimonials of gratitude, offered to her from every
continent and culture, are a recognition of that pure love
which is not self- seeking but simply benevolent. At the
same time, the devotion of the faithful shows an infallible
intuition of how such love is possible: it becomes so as a
result of the most intimate union with God, through which
the soul is totally pervaded by him—a condition which
enables those who have drunk from the fountain of God's love
to become in their turn a fountain from which “flow rivers
of living water” (Jn 7:38). 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:
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
you have given
the world its true light,
Jesus, your Son – the Son of
God.
You abandoned yourself completely
to God's call
and thus became a wellspring
of the goodness which flows
forth from him.
Show us Jesus. Lead us to him.
Teach
us to know and love him,
so that we too can become
capable of true love
and be fountains of living water
in the midst of a thirsting world.
Given in Rome, at Saint Peter's, on 25
December, the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord, in the
year 2005, the first of my Pontificate.
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
[1] Cf. Jenseits von Gut und Böse, IV,
168.
[2] X, 69.
[3] Cf. R. Descartes, Œuvres, ed. V.
Cousin, vol. 12, Paris 1824, pp. 95ff.
[4] II, 5: SCh 381, 196.
[5] Ibid., 198.
[6] Cf. Metaphysics, XII, 7.
[7] Cf. Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, who in
his treatise The Divine Names, IV, 12-14: PG 3,
709-713 calls God both eros and agape.
[8] Plato, Symposium, XIV-XV, 189c-192d.
[9] Sallust, De coniuratione Catilinae,
XX, 4.
[10] Cf. Saint Augustine, Confessions,
III, 6, 11: CCL 27, 32.
[11] De Trinitate, VIII, 8, 12: CCL 50,
287.
[12] Cf. I Apologia, 67: PG 6, 429.
[13] Cf. Apologeticum, 39, 7: PL 1,
468.
[14] Ep. ad Rom., Inscr: PG 5, 801.
[15] Cf. Saint Ambrose, De officiis
ministrorum, II, 28, 140: PL 16, 141.
[16] Cf. Ep. 83: J. Bidez,
L'Empereur Julien. Œuvres complètes, Paris 19602,
v. I, 2a, p. 145.
[17] Cf. Congregation for Bishops, Directory
for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops Apostolorum
Successores (22 February 2004), 194, Vatican City 2004,
p. 213.
[18] De Civitate Dei, IV, 4: CCL 47,
102.
[19] Cf. Pastoral Constitution on the Church
in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 36.
[20] Cf. Congregation for Bishops, Directory
for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops Apostolorum
Successores (22 February 2004), 197, Vatican City 2004,
p. 217.
[21] John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic
Exhortation Christifideles Laici (30 December 1988),
42: AAS 81 (1989), 472.
[22] Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the
Participation of Catholics in Political Life (24
November 2002), 1: L'Osservatore Romano, English
edition, 22 January 2003, p. 5.
[23] Catechism of the Catholic Church,
1939.
[24] Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity
Apostolicam Actuositatem, 8.
[25] Ibid., 14.
[26] Cf. Congregation for Bishops, Directory
for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops Apostolorum
Successores (22 February 2004), 195, Vatican City 2004,
pp. 214-216.
[27] Cf. John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic
Exhortation Christifideles Laici (30 December 1988),
41: AAS 81 (1989), 470-472.
[28] Cf. No. 32: AAS 80 (1988), 556.
[29] No. 43: AAS 87 (1995), 946.
[30] Cf. Congregation for Bishops, Directory
for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops Apostolorum
Successores (22 February 2004), 196, Vatican City 2004,
p. 216.
[31] Cf. Pontificale Romanum, De
ordinatione episcopi, 43.
[32] Cf. can. 394; Code of Canons of the
Eastern Churches, can. 203.
[33] Cf. Nos. 193-198: pp. 212-219.
[34] Ibid., 194: pp. 213-214.
[35] Sermo 52, 16: PL 38, 360.
[36] Cf. Sulpicius Severus, Vita Sancti
Martini, 3, 1-3: SCh 133, 256-258.
|
