From the Formator's desk

WHY THREE POPES FIRST WROTE ON LOVE
by: Rev. Fr. Mario Dominic C. Sanchez

THREE POPES IN OUR RECENT HISTORY wrote on "love" in the first year of their Pontificate. Pope Paul VI became Pope in 1963 and wrote about the universal call to holiness as a universal call to love in 1964. Pope John Paul II became Pope in 1978 and in 1979 wrote his first encyclical underscoring the meaninglessness of life without love. His successor, Pope Benedict XVI became Pope last year and wrote his first encyclical on the love of God this year. Why these three Popes first wrote in "love", we can only probably surmise its exigency in our time.

Pope John VI in Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, asserted that holiness is to be primarily understood as union with Christ in charity (see nos. 35-40). All Christians are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of love, and "by this holiness a more human manner of life is fostered also in earthly society". (no.40)
Pope John Paul II in Redemptoris Hominis (Encyclical on Redemption and the Dignity of Man), said: "Man cannot live without love". He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter it, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ the Redeemer "fully reveals man to himself"(no.10).

Early this 2006, when Pope Benedict XVI was asked why he wanted to write his first encyclical on God’s love (Deus Caritas Est), he clearly explained: " I wished to underline the centrality of faith in God, in that God who has assumed a human face and a human heart. Faith is not a theory that one can take up or lay aside. It is something very concrete: it is the criterion that decides our lifestyle. In an age in which hostility and greed have become superpowers, an age in which we witness the abuse of religion to the point of culminating hatred, neutral rationality on its own is unable to protect us. We are in need of the living God who has loved us unto his death.

In our college seminary, where we try to grow in holiness, study Philosophy of the Human Person and Philosophy of Religion, it is appropriate to reflect on these thoughts of the three Popes. In the end, it is hoped that we shall realize that the love that is talked or written about is not a word, or an idea, or a philosophy. It is life!