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This is how Pope Benedict XVI.'s first Encyclical begins:

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”.

I will attempt to provide here an introduction to the first part of the Encyclical, which deals with human love. The second part deals with concrete manifestations of the love of neighbor.
Pope Benedict XVI. explains why he deemed this topic to be crucial:

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 Pope then sets out on an explanation of the three Greek terms for love - eros (sexual), philia (love between friends, also referred to as "brotherly love") and agape (selfless love grounded in faith). The New Testament avoids eros, heightens the meaning of philia (in St. John's Gospel - the love between Jesus and His disciples) and gives pride of place (heretofore not given in the Greek language) to agape, creating a new vision of love. From the "Enlightenment" on, philosophers lambasted the Church on this point, most prominently the infamous Friedrich Nietzsche, who accused Christianity of "ruining" eros and causing its degeneration into vice.

While conceding that there had been a certain hostility to the body in Church history, Pope Benedict XVI. rejects such notions. Rather, he talks about a balanced approach that makes for a happy union of body and soul:

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.

Love is only fully realized when body and soul are one - an overemphasis on either is detrimental. Clearly, in today's society, the emphasis lies on the former:
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.

Pope Benedict sees the ideal described in the Song of Songs:

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.

This description of such love I found particularly beautiful:

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)

Far from dismissing eros, Pope Benedict describes a wondrous exchange, that can be compared to Jacob's Ladder, or, more mundane, a "two-way street":

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.

Pope Benedict then goes on to talk about the unique tie between marriage and eros established in the Creation account, of monogamous marriage being tied to monotheism. Then, in the New Testament, love takes on its most radical form - the Incarnation and the self-sacrifice of the Word Incarnate for the wayward creation:

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.

This self-giving was perpetuated in the Eucharist:

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.

This is, however, not just a one-on-one relationship, but a communal one:

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.

In dealing with love of neighbor, he writes:

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.

Or, as Johnny Cash sang, "You're so heavenly minded, you're no earthly good." Mind you, the Pope did not use that quote ;o)

A beautiful introduction to Christian love in its many facets, learned yet approachable and certainly a great starting point for contemplation. Not quite the "firebreather" as which the Pope has been painted over and over again, eh? If one were to believe the NYT, NCR, Sullivan and all the other naysayers, the Encyclical would have been called "You're all going to hell". Instead, we have this wonderful, comprehensive and comprehensible Encyclical.

It is certainly timely, given the horrid state of human love relationships, broken families, skyhigh divorce rates and such. The ridicule of traditional notions of fidelity ("free love") and caricature thereof - by misunderstanding, on purpose or by lack of understanding - have resulted in chaos and heartbreak, not in "liberation." "Not being a prude" resulted in being "a piece of ass", to put it crassly. Of couse, these are false alternatives - the true expression of sexual love encompasses both body and soul. We were created to enjoy physical beauty for a reason. However, this reason is not to put a price tag on it and slip dollar bills into its panties.

As always, sin, another word for lie, enslaves, but "the truth shall make you free."

posted by Gerald Augustinus at 4:15 AM