Deus caritas est

And so Pope Benedict, he wrote this letter to the whole church, an encyclical, and it's called God is Love.

Deus caritas est, which is, of course, a quote from the first letter of St. John.

And in paragraph 18 of Deus caritas est, I have it memorized just because it's one of my favorite things a pope's ever said, and a lot of popes have said a lot of good things, so this is a high bar.

He says, um, "Seeing with the eyes of Christ, we can give to others the look of love which they crave." We want to be seen by other people.

We want to be known by other people.

and

so uh but by back then when i was maxima i was i was a church maxing uh was very very close and i started to read the ratzinger uh benedict the 17th uh like uh Deus Caritas Est, I reread Fides et Ratio.

So I started to engage with the actual Pope, and I was pretty mentally engaged.

Then there was the Bergoglio situation, and for me it was very hard to remain close aesthetically.

I'm like, we're all very shocked.

But anyway, so Deus Caritas Est, God is Love, is one of his earlier encyclicals.

And basically, the whole idea here in this particular document that he's talking about is that there's a fully revealed Christocentricity in the liturgy, especially in the Eucharist, that what we're seeing there is Christ offered fully, completely for us in a way that we as human beings can't control, in a way that we can't fully understand, but which we can fully receive and therefore grow in that relationship and that capacity to be with him.

And a really great quote from it is where he talks about the Logos-filled worship.

And that was the design, right? Jesus did not, you know, he did not come in human flesh to be here until the end of time, right? He came to introduce us to the Lord, to be the face of the Father, for us to know God in a particular way and to leave that lasting relationship with us.

And I think it's, who is this, Saint? Paul, maybe, see, this is why I'm not a scripture scholar, who says that, like, blessed are you, or no, Jesus says it, blessed are they who have not seen and yet believe.

Like, there is a particular level of devotion and faith that the Lord has to impart into our hearts that did not, could not yet even exist during his time period because they still didn't know completely who he was, right? So there's something amazing in the Eucharist in particular, which is what he gets at in Deus Caritas Est, that this is the central nugget of this Christocentric shift, this theory, this theology that he's been building.

So here's my book review for you guys.