Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) - Christ said to his disciples: unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. In what does this surpassing consist? In a greater measure than the distributive righteousness which consists in giving to each his own; surpassing, by means of the measure of love. We know well, this is a measure which everyone desires, because we all desire to be loved especially when we do wrong; we desire to meet someone who looks beyond our sin and embraces and forgives us. However although we all wish to be understood when we wrong others, we are not ready to understand others when they wrong us. This is the measure of love, which we also desire, it is a measure which for Christianity almost coincides with God. We also call it mercy.
Mercy, said John Paul II, is the ability to draw all possible good from the worst possible evil. We know that even those who have done great wrong, can always change, because their human dignity remains. With this first Encyclical the Pope shares his conviction - which should be that every Christian - that we can act with the measure of love only if we renounce the use of power which immediately makes us think we will obtain a result, but which in fact brings only death. Jesus gave us the example and at the same time the gift of love, the Eucharist, which in its liturgical form must be totally conformed to him. Love is therefore forbearance, which is the same as bearing, because forbearance comes from bearing; forbearance which surpasses and reaches that great measure of love.
The believer and also the non believer realises at this point that as Joseph Ratzinger said in his book Faith, Truth and Tolerance truth is manifested most perfectly in love. Speaking of the time of crisis humanity is experiencing and explaining why Christianity is the true religion, the Cardinal wrote: “At the deepest level the content, today and always, must consist in ultimate analysis in the fact that love and reason coincide, since they are the authentic pillars of the real. Real reason is love and love is real reason. Together they are the true beginning and end of all that is real”. Love and reason therefore. In another passage the Cardinal wrote: “The understanding of God reaches its apex in St John’s words, God is Love. Truth and love are one and the same. This statement, if accepted in all that it claims, is the highest guarantee of tolerance, of a relation with the truth, whose only arm is itself”; that is, truth coincides with love. The Encyclical in a sense returns to this concept in order to help the Church and every human person embrace it: truth imposes itself not with any outside means but with itself.
Therefore this position can be identified with love because a father who loves his son, expects the truth to be accepted, understood and interpreted by the son. This is the love of God the Father. Its imposition would obtain an immediate effect, which however would not last. It would not objectively convince the person, as does the patience of love, because as St Paul says Love is patient. This is the love of God the Son. This completes so to say the path initiated with the encyclical Fides et ratio. The beauty of the faith attracts reason. The Church has the task of dilating as Augustine would say, the spaces of charity. This is the love of God the Holy Spirit who calls all in freedom. Therefore with this loving forbearance we should interweave our attitude towards all Christians and our attitude towards all believers and also forge an alliance with today’s non believers lovers of real reason. This is requested by the Pope who as a young theologian contributed to the drafting of the Nostra Aetate declaration issued by the Second Vatican Council. He requests it because of the urgent need of every generation for the salvation of humanity whom the Lord loves and for whom he gave himself. It is requested of the whole Church as a new start in her mission in the world. (Agenzia Fides 25/1/2006)
