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July 2007 VOICE OF SHALOM |
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CHURCH'S PRACTICE OF LOVE Whotever loves Christ loves the Church, and desires the Church to be increasingly the image and instrument of the love which flows from Christ. The personnel of every Catholic charitable organisation want to work with the Church and therefore with the Bishop, so that the love of God can spread throughout the world. By their sharing in the Church's practice of love, they wish to be witnesses of God and of Christ, and they wish for this very reason freely to do good to all. Interior openness to the Catholic dimension of the Church cannot fail to dispose charity workers to work in harmony with other organisations in serving various forms of need, but in a way that respects what is distinctive about the service which Christ requested of his disciples. St Paul, in his hymn to charity (cf. 1 Cor.13), teaches us that it is always more than activity alone: "If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing" (v.3). This hymn must be the Magna Carta of all ecclesial service; it sums up all the reflections on love which I have offered throughtout this Encyclical Letter. Practical activity will always be insufficient, unless it visibly expresses a love for man, a love nourished by an encounter with Christ. My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my very self with them: if my gift is not to prove a source of humiliation. I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift.
Pope Benedict XVI
Deus Caritas Est | |
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