In so far as an encyclical can be said to be a message for all seasons Pope Benedict's first encyclical “God is Love”, Deus Caritas Est , must be that. The theme of love guarantees its enduring quality.

But, even as it urges the Church and the world to examine and, indeed, to experience love, the encyclical is the perfect accompaniment to his 2006 Lenten message, which describes Lent as a “privileged time of interior pilgrimage” to God, the source of mercy.

Love, the Holy Father says in the encyclical published on Christmas Day 2005, is itself “a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God.” Both Lenten message and encyclical prepare the believer for encountering the world.

The encyclical falls into two parts. The Pope treats in Part I with the nature of love and its meaning in biblical faith, and the relationship between sexual love and God's love.

Can someone love God whom he or she cannot see? Is it possible at all? Love of God is possible, the Holy Father affirms, and is clearly demanded in the First Letter of John. While the bond between love of God and love of neighbour is undeniable, he states that the latter is really a “path” that leads to encounter with God himself.

In Part II, the Holy Father addresses the ways in which believers can and must bring the light of God into the world. “Love needs to be organised,” he says, “if it is to be an ordered service to the community.” Charity, love shown to persons, is not welfare activity that can be left to other people. Charity arises out of our very nature as a Church community.

Faith and politics

While the “just ordering of society and the State” is a task proper to the State the Holy Father notes that if justice is to be carried out fairly, “it must undergo constant purification, since it can never be completely free of the danger of a certain ethical blindness caused by the dazzling effect of power and special interests.”

It is in this area that the Church has a vital role to play. Politics and faith do meet. Faith, an encounter with the living God, can be a “purifying force for reason itself” and so for justice.

The Pope goes to great lengths to reiterate that the Church “cannot and must not replace the State” but must play its part in helping to form consciences, and to stimulate insights into an awareness of what is truly just.

Love is a precious gift which Christians bring to the world. To receive and give love, to be “a source from which living waters flow” requires, the Pope says, that “one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God.”

The Holy Father describes his aim in the encyclical as a calling “forth in the world renewed energy and commitment to the human response to God's love.” Love in the world is possible, he says, “because we are created in the image of God” who lavishes his love upon us. He sees love as the way of infusing the light of God into our world.

In a world where a secular culture attempts to keep the Church on the fringes of society, Deus Caritas Est expresses lucidly how much society needs the Church.