1. This is the essence of the Catholic Religion.
Pope Benedicts XVI’s encyclical is out. He goes into the basic and all-embracing topic of Charity. This is the very essence of Christianity and explains everything else therein. What is refreshing is that the Pope just confirmed that the Apostles, the Fathers of the Church, and St. Therese of the Child Jesus were right all the time. What is bewildering is that some have reacted in awe as if this was the first time they heard of it. G.K. Chesterton noted that Catholicism is a vibrant youth that is always new.
2. Pope Benedict did not write about other topics because this encyclical explains it all.
In the early pagan times slavery was the rule. Christianity told the masters and slaves to love one another and slavery was abolished. The employers and employees were told to love one another and the socio-economic system improved. Husbands and wives were exhorted to love one another and there was no divorce or separation. Parents and children were taught how to love one another and there was no abortion and children were raised up well. Civil leaders and citizens were told to love one another and there was civil peace and liberty. The rich and the poor were told to love one another and no one was hungry. Neighbors were told to love one another and there was no war. I can go on and on. Obviously love can solve all problems and could have turned earth into paradise. After this encyclical, if the world gets this right, the Pope does not have to write another encyclical.
Charity is the main topic. Everything else in Catholicism is sub or sub-sub topics that must be anchored on Charity otherwise they could get lost in the deeps. But seeing how some are already misinterpreting the Encyclical, the Pope might just have to write 20 more.
3. The Holy Father emphasized the need to obey the commands to love God and to love one’s neighbor, and these two can never be separated as Christ said the second is just like the first. The first must be love of God and the second is love of neighbor, which must be an overflowing of the first. Love of neighbor cannot exist alone. We must aim at love of God. Love of neighbor will be a natural off-shoot that the first love will overseer.
4. The Pope warned us of the disastrous effects of separating love of neighbor from love of God. Love of neighbor alone is disastrous and the Encyclical noted Julian the Apostate who tried to imitate the love of neighbor of the Christians but without the love for God. He tried to combine love of neighbor with paganism. Today, the world has set aside God — and we have returned to paganism…
5. When love of God and neighbor go hand in hand, those around experience the presence of God because they see the love of God in the love of neighbor. Errors are removed, truth becomes evident, and conversions take place in attraction to the God behind the love of neighbor.
6. How is it that with all the aids given by Europe and the US to nations in crisis and in the throes of tragedies, removal of errors and the discovery of truth do not happen? Because their act of helping one’s neighbor is not accompanied by love of God. This is a secret which only the Catholic Church has, but which even many Catholics do not know.
Absence of the love of God, instead, encourages abuse, ingratitude, corruption and hatred of donors. On the part of the donors it causes donors’ fatigue.
As the Holy Father says in his encyclical, the gift should be a source of humility for the giver but not a source of humiliation for the receiver. This is done if the giver gives of himself in the gift — by loving his neighbor out of his love for God.
7. In the second part of the Encyclical the Pope enumerates some common works of charity, constantly reminding us that the soul of such works is the love of God. Catholics should cooperate with civil authorities and other groups to be able to instill in their works the true soul of charitable endeavors, the love of God.
The Pope emphasized how to do good works in detail. Many good works of Catholics are not done properly. Thus the receiver feels humiliated and insulted. And they do not feel the presence of God.
8. In his Encyclical, the Pope did not include “how to attain love of God.” This is a detail reserved to mystical theology. I wouldn’t want to go into detail and spoil the Pope’s encyclical by recalling that the way to reach love of God is through the purgative, illuminative and unitive way, a narrow road that few Catholics tread.
In Scriptures, some truths are known and some are hidden. The Encyclical is the same; it shows us, as it were, the address of where we should go, but not the way. The Pope leaves it to the true seeker to find this address by a certain way of life.
9. Then the Holy Father showed his traditional knowledge by reminding us that this was the way the first monastic communities did things. This is no secret. It was the way St. Benedict and his monks did it. The Encyclical mentions two great monastic figures, St. Martin of Tours and St. Anthony the Hermit. Charity was learned in monasteries that were referred to as “the school of the Lord’s service.”
The love of God always overflows into obedience to God’s will. Sometimes God’s will is for a saint to take care of the sick, the cripple, and the orphan like St. Vincent the Paul. At other times, according to the needs of the Church (and not necessarily the need of the age) God wants pure contemplatives, like St. Therese ……like the Blessed Virgin Mary.