Jesuit Journeys
Spring/Summer 2006

The Jesuit Partnership:
Pope's encyclical heralds importance of love

By Fr. Dick McGarrity, SJ
President,The Jesuit Partnership

God is Love (Deus Caritas Est). This profound expression that we find in St. John’s first letter is also the title and the opening words of the first encyclical from Pope Benedict XVI that he issued earlier this year.

This formal and beautifully written reflection, which I urge you to read in its entirety, Fr. Dick McGarrity, SJ encourages us to refocus President, our attention on the central The Jesuit Partnership notion that love is paramount in all our activities as individual Christians and as a Church. It is our very foundation.

Love moves us to act with faith to create a better world, so that in building God’s kingdom we may grow to understand the transcendent meaning of love. Echoing the words of Jesus, our first obligation is to love God and, concomitantly, to love our neighbor. They are really two aspects of the same command.

Near the beginning of the encyclical the Pope talks about eros, or romantic love, which is the seed of understanding love growing ultimately toward God – an ascending love. There is also philia, which is a love we encounter in friendship and which was experienced by Christ with his apostles. Finally there is agape, a word for unconditional love which, in contrast to eros, is a descending love. Agape appears more that 100 times in the New Testament, indicating its importance. It is, after all, the love that God demonstrated toward us through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

Clearly love is essential to us on every level. Without it we feel a hole or emptiness within. One can possess all the material wealth in the world and still feel this emptiness. It is not an emptiness that can be filled with a nicer home, a better car, a big boat, or a larger portfolio. We fill this hole with our connections to each other – our spouse, our friends, our families, and all of humankind.

Whether we are materially wealthy or not, we must be open to a self-giving love. Some of us are called to share our gifts with the poor, and they, in turn, need the grace to receive with loving hearts. In this way we move forward together in the spirit of God’s unconditional love – agape.

As children our parents told us to share, even as our survival instincts told us not to. As adults we know sharing is a necessary responsibility. However, economic insecurity sometimes compels us to cling to the material. While this is natural to some degree, we must pay special attention to when our need for security interferes with our potential happiness and gets in the way of God’s love.

In my previous column I spoke of Holy Boldness as a spirit in which the Society of Jesus responds to opportunities that challenge us to enter new frontiers – real and metaphorical – that provide occasions to build God’s Kingdom. As we confront life’s insecurities, trusting that God will provide so that we can be generous certainly requires such a spirit, courage, and faith.

As president of the Jesuit Partnership, I am a privileged witness to the powerful love that engenders agape when we “Clearly love is essential to us on every level. Without it we feel a hole or emptiness within. One can possess all the material wealth in the world and still feel this emptiness. It is not an emptiness that can be filled with a nicer home, a better car, a big boat, or a larger portfolio. We fill this hole with our connections to each other – our spouse, our friends, our families, and all of humankind.” regard to the material, but the transcendent as well – in promoting the Kingdom of God.

With “Deus Caritas Est” the Holy Father reminds us that charity is as essential to the Church as the liturgy and we who profess a Christian faith must therefore be people with generous hearts.