Vatican City, 26 February 2016 (VIS) “The message of the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est remains timely, indicating the ever relevant prospect for the Church’s journey. The more we live in this spirit, the more authentic we all are as Christians”, said Pope Francis this morning as he received in audience in the Clementine Hall the participants in the two-day international congress “Love will never end: Prospects ten years on from the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est”, organised by the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum”, which analysed the theological and pastoral repercussions and prospects opened by Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical.
The text, said Francis, “concerns a theme that allows us to retrace the entire history of the Church, which is also a history of charity. It is a story of the love received from God, to be carried to the world: this charity received and given is the fulcrum of the history of the Church and of the history of each one of us. … Both for individual members of the faithful and for the Christian community as a whole, the words of Jesus hold true: that charity is the first and greatest of the commandments: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength… You shall love your neighbour as yourself'”.
The present Jubilee Year, continued the Holy Father, “is also an opportunity to return to this beating heart of our life and our witness, to the centre of the proclamation of faith: ‘God is love’. God does not simply have the desire or capacity to love; God is love: charity is His essence, it is His nature. He is unique, but not solitary; … He cannot be closed in on Himself because He is communion, He is charity; and charity by its nature is communicated and shared. In this way, God associates man to His life of love, and even if man turns away from Him, God does not remain distant but goes out to meet him. This going out to meet us, culminating in the Incarnation of His Son, is His mercy. It is His way of expressing Himself to us sinners, His face that looks at us and cares for us. The encyclical reads: ‘Jesus’ programme is a heart which sees. This heart sees where love is needed and acts accordingly’. Charity and mercy are in this way closely related, because they are God’s way of being and acting: His identity and His name”.