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Italian version
 "Deus
Caritas est" is a document, which proposes a deep and enlightening
reflection on Christian love. In the words of Cardinal William Joseph
Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of faith, the first
encyclical letter of Pope Benedict XVI is a programmatic bill, which
revolves round the theme of love. "The word Love" today is so much
spoiled, consumed and abused as we are almost afraid of letting it
surface our lips. Yet it is a primordial word, an expression of the
primordial reality; we cannot simply abandon it. We must get it back,
purify and restore it to its original splendour, so that it may illumine
our life and show the right way to it". This is an inexhaustible theme,
on which we have asked a reflection from Sr. Giuseppina Alberghina, a
sister of Jesus the Good Shepherd (Pastorelle), vice-president of USMI.
She has been Superior General of her Institute for two mandates. A woman
of thought and action, she has caught not only what the Encyclical
contains, but also what she would like to be made more explicit.
Which passage of the Encyclical, has impressed you most?
"I have been impressed by the clarity with which Benedict
XVI has wanted to present, not only to the believers but to all, the
true image of God and, consequently, the true image of the human
person. With a very high level of pastoral sensitivity, he knows that
many false images obscure this clarity. If it is true that one of the
biggest challenges of our time is the anthropological problem, on the
wake of Irenaeus and many more Fathers of the Church, the Holy Father
knows that we cannot face correctly the definition of man, if we do not
start from a theological vision. To speak of man, we need to speak of
Christ and to speak of Christ we must start from the Holy Trinity. In
fact God has revealed himself in Christ as father, Son and Holy Spirit.
God created us to the image and similitude of the Trinity.
Man is a being in relation: his structure is
dialogical, just as love is dialogical. Now, when man subtracts himself
from his relation with God, he consequently falsifies every relation
with others and with creation. He exploits the created things and
finishes by exploiting also persons and religion itself. He does it to
feel strong and to conceal the ontological weakness, into which he has
fallen. The person who is no longer in relation turns to
self-affirmation, to self, to egoism. However he is not always aware of
being dangling in space, of resting on a false foundation, which leads
him to desperation and death. The vacuum of his relation with God
becomes a chasm, which swallows man and the whole creation with him.
With a letter to a weekly well-known Catholic paper,
Benedict XVI has wanted to underline that, even if at the
first reading the "Deus Caritas" may appear to be too theoretical, it
has instead a concrete finality. Which indications can it give to the
youth in this sense?
"It is not theoretical at all. Rather its references to
concrete life are very strong. It seems that the Pope addresses just the
youths, in a dialogue, which we have already known in other moments of
his pontificate, as in the GMG of Cologne.
The Pope seems to say: Dear youths, do not be
afraid of Love, bless God for the beauty of the human person, beautiful
in the integrity of its body, psyche and spirit. In this integrity, the
Eros also is precious, because the agape Love redeems it, the Love that
seeks reciprocity, but never returns to itself, in a narcissism, which
empties the heart. Dear youths, you know and perhaps you have
experienced that the Eros, which spurs us to go out of us, is a precious
gift to enter the dialogue of altruistic love. Love is a gift by its
very nature. Without the availability of dying to self and donating our
life to others, no love is capable of lasting and of leading us to the
fullness of life. Love is always paschal, namely it always lives the
dynamic of the seed, which dies to give abundant fruit and to nurture
life, just as Jesus has done (see Jo 12, 24)".
According to you, which message has the Pope wanted to
address to all the believers?
"We, the disciples of Jesus, are by
definitions people who believe in Love: 'We have recognised for
ourselves, and put our faith in the love God has for us' (1 Jo 4,16),
John says in his first letter. We have known it just through Christ
Jesus who, dying and rising for our love, has given us His Spirit. Love
effuses in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
We believe that God is Love in His deepest
identity. In Him, love is not a sentiment or a task: it is His very
being. The God whom Jesus has revealed to us is a God in three Persons.
Love being dialogical by its nature, in God there is the Loving Love,
namely the Father, the Loved Love, that is the Son and the Love of Love
or the Spirit, the Breath of the Father and the Son in the on going
dynamic of Love. Love has been outpoured into our hearts through the
Holy Spirit, who lives in us, as St. Paul reminds us in his letter to
the Romans (5,5).
The Love outpoured into our hearts involves
us in the Trinitarian dialogue and, in the incarnate, dead and risen
Christ; it becomes life for us, a life, which wins death. It becomes
salvation history, winning the ugliness of the history of sin, which we
carry with us because of refusing the relation with God.
In his Encyclical, the Pope says that the "term love" has
become today one of the most used and abused words, to which we
attribute completely different meanings. Does this reminder assume a
particular meaning today in a society, which is indifferent to the
suffering of others and is imbued with hedonism?
"Every encyclical is addressed to all the members of the
Church. In the way of arguing and in the used language, however, the
Pope seems to pay more attention to those who do not belong to it or
who, though members of the Church are in difficulty about their
belonging to it. With this encyclical, Pope Benedict weaves a dialogue
with modernity and with what we call post-modern culture. We can catch
this, above all, from his wanting to face the dialogue on a ground
common to all men, the ground of love, of the need to love and to
receive love. This ground of love is concerned also with the roots of
faith and of Christian life, because God is Love. The Pope seeks also a
common language with our contemporary men, though urging the
purification of one's own language on the word love, which is not devoid
of ambiguity.
The Holy Father speaks several times of the
need to purify our heart in order to purify our way of understanding and
living love. He never uses the word "sin", but it is understood in every
statement, like resistance to the free Love of God, perversion of
relation, awareness of our tendency to self-affirmation by using and
abusing others, up to making them one's own possession. We need to catch
hold of something or somebody and to clasp it to ourselves in order to
feel secure. However, when we clasp without donating, the heart gets
empty. This leads us to some anaesthetics such as indifference or
hedonism, the seeking pleasure for pleasure. This consumes life without
filling it with what we thirst most".
Let us linger now on the passage dedicated to the
witnesses of God's love, who have been able to incarnate the mercy of
God in their time, like mother Theresa of Calcutta. This is an aspect of
him, who works submissively to build up bridges of peace. This would
deserve a reflection because the number of Christian martyrs keeps
growing day after day. Undoubtedly, the Encyclical of the Pope is in the
providential sense ….
"I would add many more saints to those whom
Benedict XVI mentions in his encyclical letter. I would add particularly
those, whose lives have highlighted the source of life, namely Christ.
It is Christ who, being first in loving us, makes our heart to overflow
with love for our brothers and sisters, without distinction of culture,
race, people and religion.
Love is not loved, St. Catherine of Siena or
Margaret of Cortona or Francis of Assisi would repeat today. Love is
wounded, John of the Cross or Theresa of Avila would cry again. Love is
crucified, because He has taken the abyss of evil on himself and has
filled it with Love, Edith Stein would continue to state from the hell
of Auschiwtz.
The life of the Church is full of many
saints, many religious, who have loved Love and have made history
fruitful with works of love, often up to the shedding of blood. Their
blood has enwrapped in forgiveness and in God's mercy their own
torturers and murderers. We can start from Stephen, a deacon, the first
martyr, who attracted his persecutor to Christ. In fact, the apostle
Paul seems to be a fruit of the altruistic love of Stephen. Tertullian
teaches us that without the love of many martyrs, we would not have the
continuity of the transmission of faith in the Church, the patrimony of
spiritual holiness and wisdom which we have inherited.
The Encyclical is dedicates the most intense page to
Mary. The reflection, which concludes the text of the successor of
Peter, reminds us that Mary, "Mother of the Lord", is a mirror of
holiness. Her soul magnifies the Lord, that is, it makes Him great".
This is the programme of her life - the Pontiff adds: never to put
herself at the centre, but make space for the God, whom she meets in
prayer and in the service of neighbours- only then the world becomes
good. Mary is great just because she does not want to make herself
great. She wants God to be made great".
"On
reading the pages dedicated to Mary, the verses of Dante came to my
mind, the concluding verses of his poem, when he puts on the lips of St.
Bernard the prayer to Mary.
Nel venire tuo si
riaccese l'Amore, per lo cui caldo nell'eterna face, così è germinato
questo fiore" (Canto XXXIII del Paradiso).
The uncreated Love kindles itself just in the womb of
Mary, a human creature, a woman whose humility and gratuity fascinate
God himself, who finds a full welcome in her. Mary remains little among
the little ones of the Gospel, a littleness that paradoxically can host
the infinite, made little through love. I do not think that there may
ever be a more audacious feminism than this: a woman becomes the Mother
of God because she opposes at the very root the logic of a perverted
love, which wants to put itself at the centre, to the disadvantage of
others. With Mary, we magnify the Lord. We join this song of praise and
blessing in the contemplation of God's work. It is God, made man for the
sake of love that changes history by inserting the agape principle in
it, a principle which changes the desert of our desire of violence and
overpowering into the garden of peace and the beauty of Love"
One million and two hundred thousand copies of the
Encyclical have been sold in Italy: this is the latest news given by the
Vatican publishers on the diffusion of the Deus Caritas est. It is an
absolute record for a pontifical Encyclical. We must notice also that
the document of Pope Benedict XVI on Christian love is among the books
most sold also by the Feltrinelli Bookshops, one "temple" of the Italian
lay culture. To you, what are the reasons for this success?
"I am not up to the mark to say the reasons
of this extraordinary diffusion of the papal encyclical. There can be
many reasons. I can say one thing that your question has created in me.
Perhaps never as in our confusing and fragmented times, the human heart
has gone in search of nearing the mystery of God. The lay culture does
not deny God, but has confined Him to the private sphere, rendering Him
inoffensive. Perhaps we are growing in the awareness that what happens
in the human heart has its effects on all the other spheres, even on
those which seem to be farther away from our interior problematic, like
the political and economic ones.
Here I wish to remember that the Pope, in no.28 of the
encyclical, tells us that Christian love has a strong political valence.
He says that the disciple of Christ brings into it the newness of God's
Love, apt to give value to the human efforts in leading history to the
fullness of life, with its participation in the building of the earthly
city.
Perhaps the lay culture is becoming aware
that we cannot fragment man, we cannot reduce him to a single
dimension. We come to be more and more aware that the truest reality is
not only what falls under our senses, but that it is much ampler and
fetches from the mystery, from what is inaccessible to the eyes, but not
to the heart.
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