Resumo de Deus Caritas Est: God Is Love

Deus Caritas Est (God is Love) is the first encyclical by the Pope Benedict XVI, the man who succeeded the Great Pope of our times, John Paul II, in whom we saw how tangibly God loved human beings. The Pope could not have timed his encyclical better, for we live in a world where God is called upon to spit vengeance, justify hatred and voilence, and to bless the modern (and false) crusaders of faith, be it any religion. While one has to agree in all humility with Thomas Aquinas that God is unknowable and therefore a mystery, and given the limitations of language, if ever humans tried to speak of God, it shall be in terms of God as Love: Deus Caritas Est.

The Pope captures his thoughts in just two sections. The first section deals with the theoritical and philosophical aspects of love: the Unity of Love in the world. The second section deals with the practical application of this love in our service to our brothers and sisters. 'Love' is a word that has diverse meanings. Eros (we all understand this term!), Philia (friendship) and agape (self-sacrificing love) are all various manifestations of this unitary concept of love. And the call of humanity is to evolve towards the highest form of love which is agape - wherein one gladly accepts sacrifices and sufferings for the sake of one's own brothers and sisters, the wider humanity. God himself taught the lessons towards the same by sending his son into our midst who rubbed his shoulders with us and took over the daily chores of human life, suffered and died. In fact, God IS Love itself, and true love IS God himself. The task of humanity is to fill oneself with this love that proceeds from God, and share the same with one another as one community of love. We soak in the love of God, and let this love flow to one another, without the boundaries of race, caste, creed, color, etc. The second part of the book is a detailing of this sacred duty of the Church to spread this love in charitable endeavors. If one reads the Church in the wider context of those who have fallen in love with God, its instructions become personal and universal.

Didn't Teilhard de Chardin say that after mankind has mastered the wind and the waves and the skies, they would harness the powers of love, and then, for the second time in the history of humanity, man would have discovered fire ? Yes indeed, the book gives us hope, and takes us closer to the second discovery of fire.

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