Daily Retreat 01/27/06

2006 Jan 27 Fri: Ordinary Weekday/ Angela Merici, v, rf

2 Sm 11: 1-4a. 5-10a. 13-17/ Ps 50(51): 3-4. 5-6a. 6bcd-7. 10-11/ Mk 4: 26-34

From today’s readings: "At the turn of the year, when kings go out on campaign.... Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.... Without parables He did not speak to them, but to His own disciples He explained everything in private."

Deus Caritas Est (Part II)

Wednesday, the first encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI was published, entitled, "Deus Caritas Est," the Latin words meaning, "God is Love"(cf. 1John 4:8,16). It is freely available for downloading from the Vatican’s website: www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals /documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html

Yesterday, some points of the first part of the letter were presented which philosophically reflected especially on the convergence of "eros" and "agape" love. Today, we look at a few highlights of the second part of the letter, which is subtitled, "Caritas: The Practice of Love by the Church as a Community of Love."

This second section focuses concretely on the Church’s essential communal commitment to put charitable love into daily practice. Pope Benedict explains that "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."

The Church is committed both to the pursuit of justice and the practice of charity. While direct formation of just political structures is not part of the Church’s mission, still the Church " 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.," while "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."

Furthermore, "Love—caritas—will always prove necessary, even in the most just society.... 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. 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."

The Pope closes the encyclical with a reflection on the inspiring examples of the many holy people throughout the ages (e.g., Mary, Martin of Tours, Mother Teresa of Calcutta) that teach us how to live in Christian love.