The pope is pretty awesome

Irrespective of the degree to which you care, most of you probably know that the pope released his first encyclical a little while ago (two Wednesdays ago? I've been getting my days confused lately). The theme is simple, and spelled out in the title: Deus Caritas Est. To say the encyclical is dynamite doesn't do it justice, but I'll say it anyway: it's dynamite.


God is love. What could be easier or more difficult to understand? After all, the matter is so easy that children understand it, as any one who has ever seen a child singing "Jesus loves me," or one who has ever been that child. Yes, yes, yes, we say, of course - God is love. Of course he is, and the love I feel for him is a beautiful emotion that comes and goes, even though I know in some way or another that he is present whether I feel him or not. But what we adults forget is that we are called to love God as his children, as a child would. Love for children is not an emotion; it is deep-seated and absolute knowledge and trust that penetrates every aspect of the child's being.


Those who have been blessed with good parents will know automatically what I mean, if they make an honest attempt to remember what it was like to be six years old and love their parents. A child does not feel his love for his parents at some moments, and not at others; rather, children love with their whole beings at all times, even when their thoughts are radically far from their parents. A child sitting alone at a table drawing a picture and humming to himself is, at that moment, loving his parents with his entire existence. This boy does not know whence come the pencils and paper he is using; nor does he know that his parents have sacrificed their own needs to buy them for him because it makes them happiest to see him happy; nor does he know that this moment of peace is borne of their labor. What he does know with every piece of his being is that his parents provide. The trust that a child has in his parent's ability to provide for him is a permament awareness; it is not an emotion, although it can be accompanied by a physical sensation far deeper than most passing adult emotions. Rather, it is a certainty that comes from knowing no alternative: parents, and what they have provided, are literally the only things that exist. This is, as I say, a trait of perfect trust. Even at school, when far from parents and the comforts of home, the child knows that he is experiencing something that his parents have laid out for him. When things go awry at school and the child is, say, picked on, he cries and complains because he has been hurt, and he knows that being hurt goes against what his parents will for him: I'm going to tell my daddy on you, the child says, in perfect confidence that invoking the provider will restore peace to his life.


So why does this mean that the child sitting at the table drawing and humming is loving his parents with his whole being? Because before a child learns that when adults say 'love' they mean a certain mode of behavior, a certain way of addressing, touching, and treating certain people as opposed to other people, the child believes that all things have been provided for him out of love and that his parents want him to be happy because they love him, so anything he does in his innocence with what they have given him to make himself happy is actually an act of profound trust that stems from a perfect love.


Of course, children realize eventually that their parents are imperfect, that they only have wisdom and resources to provide for them up to a point, and that even their love can sometimes be tainted with weakness and self-love. When we say God is Love, then, we discover the true object of the love that was the very substance of our childhood. For this is what it means to love God: to acknowledge that his love is not something exterior to ourselves, but is in fact the very fabric of our existence - that it is only in him that we live and move and have our being. This is, I believe, the challenge and the joy that "God is love" presents us with: to acknowledge the love that already sustains us and trust in it so deeply that every moment will be a living prayer to God, whether our thoughts are on our grocery list, a paper that won't let itself be written, or the mystery of the Incarnation.