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| | Features | ISBN13: 9781586171636Condition: NewNotes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
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| | Description | Deluxe Hardcover Collectors' Edition Everyone needs love. Everyone desires love. But not everyone understands love. In fact, love is probably the most misunderstood subject in history. In his first Encyclical, Pope Benedict helps to clarify the meaning of love. He examines the nature of various kinds of love—human love and divine love, eros, friendship, and charity. He writes beautifully and inspirationally of how man was made for love by the God who is love, the God who became one of us out of love—Jesus Christ. In the second part of the Encyclical, Benedict addresses the Church's practice of love. He examines the relationship between justice and charity, as well as the call of every Catholic to serve others in love. The Pope's "love letter" to mankind is remarkably accessible and timely. Jewels from "God Is Love" ~ Deus Caritas Est "'God is love and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him' (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First Letter of John express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith: the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny." "We have come to believe in God's love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, that gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction." "St. John's Gospel describes that event in these words: 'God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should . . . have eternal life' (3:16). In acknowledging the centrality of love, Christian faith has retained the core of Israel's faith, while at the same time giving it new depth and breadth." "In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant. For this reason, I wish in my first Encyclical, to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us, and which we in turn must share with others." "I wanted here—at the beginning of my Pontificate—to clarify some essential facts concerning the love which God mysteriously and gratuitously offers to man, together with the intrinsic link between that Love and the reality of human love." —Pope Benedict XVI | |
| | Product Details | | Author: | Pope Benedict XVI | | Hardcover: | 108 pages | | Publisher: | Ignatius Press | | Publication Date: | May 31, 2006 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 1586171631 | | Product Width: | 0.0 inches | | Product Height: | 0.0 inches | | Package Length: | 8.1 inches | | Package Width: | 5.0 inches | | Package Height: | 0.6 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.6 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 9 reviews |
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1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 And the greatest of these is charity. Mar 11, 2009
Pay no attention to the inane 1-star reviews below; this is a refreshing treatise on God as love and the love of God by a leading European intellectual and leader of the largest organized body of Christians on earth. Benedict XVI's pastoral letter begins with a philosophical reflection on love. He provocatively suggests that the bifurcation between agape (as self-sacrificing love) and eros (as desiring love) that we see in modern Christian biblical studies, theology, and ethics should be overcome and that the "caritas" of which the Scriptures speak involves elements of desire and sacrifice for the Other alike. He takes theological insights like these and applies them to the Church's practice of love in charitable endeavors and other works of love. Whether or not you accept what the Roman Catholic Church teaches, the Pope's articulation of the nature of the personal, Triune God of Love and the works of faith and charity which participate in this God of Love provides ample substance for Christians, Jews, Muslims, and all people of good will to discuss.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Great Message to the world Jan 19, 2009
This is a must read book. Easy to understand, and very direct to the point. If you want the real meaning of Love, you should read this book.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
God is Love Oct 15, 2008
I found this to be very meaningful and relevant. While there are many parts that could be pulled out for comment, I found one simple part speaking to me specifically. As one who was and is discerning the diaconate, Pope Benedict placed into my heart what will be for me a lifelong motto; "Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave."
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
True insight into the nature of God May 02, 2008
This encyclical is an imperative for anyone who wants to understand what makes Benedict XVI tick, and what has been making him tick for many years. He is a supreme theologian, but also a man deeply in love with God. In a way that is crystal clear, he explains what it means to say that God is Love, as the apostle John tells us in his letters. This successor to the apostles explains the meanings of the word love, and how they apply to us, in ways only an outstanding teacher, which he is, can do. He helps us understand why the different meanings of the words for love in Greek are important, for each has unique implications. We can understand this most clearly when we consider the dialogue in the Greek text between Jesus and Peter after the Resurrection, where Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Him. In English, we do not see the dynamic of the conversation. In Greek we do, and the difference Benedict XVI explains between agape love (total self-giving love) and filio (love of friendship) becomes clear. Jesus' first question to Peter is, "Do you agape Me more than these?" Peter, mindful of his recent denials, can only respond, "You know I filio you." Jesus then changes the question and instead asks, "Do you agape Me?", not asking for a comparison of his love to that of the others. Again, Peter responds, "You know that I filio you." You can actually feel his inner pain as he understands the difference between Jesus' question and his answer. Finally, Jesus changes the question again and asks, "Do you filio Me?", and Peter responds, "Yes, Lord, you know I filio you." Benedict XVI teaches us in this encyclical that we must be ready to respond to God with an answer to these same questions. He challenges us to look within and ask ourselves how much we love God, and if we do not love God with agape love, we need to develop our relationship with God further because God loves us infinitely with an Agape Love.
2 of 38 found the following review helpful:
 Not Feeling the Love Apr 29, 2008
Why grovel? God did not write this book. As the prominent Catholic theologian Eamon Duffy states in "Faith of Our Fathers," a serious theological mistake is "the notion that the pope is the principal source of teaching and theological expertise in the Church, and that everything he says or writes is double-distilled wisdom, and worth repeating. [This] foolishly and idolatrously exalts the intellect of the men who get made bishops of Rome to a stature by no means all of them warrant" (p 81). Pope Benedict XVI is a man who has written better books than this one, including "What It Means to Be a Christian." Real faith examines difficult issues.
This volume lacks the depth and breadth of the Pope's more challenging works, where he addressed the limits and fallibility of the Church, it fails to rise to theological heights, and falls flat. On page 71, Point #29, the Pope states: "The Church has an indirect duty . . . to contribute to the purification of reason and to the reawakening of these moral forces without which just structures are neither established nor prove effective in the long run." The Pope elaborates that Christian charitable activity, "contribute to a better world only by personally doing good now, with full commitment and wherever we have the opportunity, independently of partisan strategies and programs" (pg 81). Yet the Church buried its collective head in the sand regarding its own problems; justice belongs to God, not just forgiveness, anything less is the very moral relativism and equivocation the Pope bewails.
As of February 2009, the Pope committed a serious error by lifting the excommunications of four Lefebvrist, St Pius X (SSPX) bishops. Bishop Richard Williamson has denied the Holocaust, telling Swedish radio that there were no Nazi gas chambers. The Superior of SSPX, Bishop Bernard Fellay, continues to protest Vatican II, among other bizarre beliefs. In contrast, the President of the German Bishop's Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, stated that he expects a complete break between the Church and SSPX soon. Prejudices must be unearthed. Even the late Father Neuhaus, although he acknowledged the Church's relationship to Jews through Jesus, became huffy and arch while reviewing "Hitler's Willing Executioners," excusing Martin Luther's hateful writings against Jews, the blueprint for the 1938 Nazi Kristallnacht. Many devout people, Catholics and others, to their immense credit, find all this very difficult, and are speaking out against this Pope's latest action of moral relativism. He insists that the Church must forgive pedophile priests, thus, how he cannot exclude the outrageous SSPX from the loving embrace of indiscriminate mercy. Pope Benedict XVI drifts further from the idealism of Vatican II, blaming the Church' ills on: the media, the devil, the Enlightenment, victims of church abuse, Communism, Atheism, the secularism of the European Union, among a plethora of other scapegoats. This polarity of displacement is merely convenient, it disrupts values of moral fortitude and personal responsibility.
In past writings, prior to becoming Pope, Joseph Ratzinger provided clarity, advocating that faith must look at the hard questions, that our doubts and anger, like Job's, must wrestle with issues in an open way. Other theologians have noticed a serious change from: "What It Means to Be a Christian," where Ratzinger wrote: "Everything we believe about God, and everything we know about man, prevents us from accepting that beyond the limits of the Church there is no more salvation, that up to the time of Christ all men were subject to eternal damnation" (pg 45). He reflected on the reality of the Church, "all the various ranks and gradations that have been thought up, all the courtly ceremony!" (p 30). Sadly, the Pope's later work, like "God is Love," reflect the indoctrination and responsibilities of a Holy Bureaucrat, a necessary hardening of thought, of crusting over. God is love, the Church does not equal God. The formation of real faith requires the strength the ask tough questions.
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