On Love: Selected Writings of Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI)

Sr. Margaret Kerry, FSP, reviews a newly compiled volume of essays about love and the love of God.

When On Love by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) became available for review, I seized the opportunity. I was one of the fortunate students at Boston College able to take part in a month-long seminar on the writings of Joseph Ratzinger. He is a spiritual chiropractor who can help us get back to correct theological understanding. Love was a constant theme of Benedict XVI.

The key to Ratzinger is his gravitation toward an Augustinian and Bonaventurian emphasis on love as an antidote to the hyper-rationalism of God as the logos of pure reason. The theme of God as love marked his first encyclical as pope. Salvation ultimately means moving toward relationship to God, orienting us to God and receiving ourselves back in genuine self-giving. This call to continual conversion bursts the boundaries between God and us so we can say with St. Paul: “It is no longer I who live, it is Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:2).

During his trip to the Czech Republic, Pope Benedict XVI remarked,

“Man needs to be liberated from material oppressions, but more profoundly, he must be saved from the evils that afflict the spirit. And who can save him if not God, Who is Love and has revealed His face as Almighty and Merciful Father in Jesus Christ? Our firm hope is therefore Christ.”

For Benedict God’s name is no longer a word, but a person: Jesus himself. We are called to a relationship since God hands himself over to us in such a way that he can be called upon by us. God is within our reach. In Jesus, God has entered forever into coexistence with us. He has become the truly nameable. Our response, “I believe,” can be literally translated as “I hand myself over to.” In Benedict’s thought, then, we hand ourselves over to Love Who is beautiful and true.

Jesus reveals God and at the same time discloses who we are. Our relationship to God and our human fellowship cannot be separated. In this selection of writings each chapter brings Christian thought back into alignment or, using a Karl Rahner expression, “awakens and makes explicit what is already there in the depth of man, not by nature but by grace.” On Love shines God’s love through the prism of Advent, Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, St. Joseph, Mary, the saints and more. It is a book to bring to prayer.

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Our relationship to God and our human fellowship cannot be separated. #catholicmom

During this Easter season Benedict XVI reminds us,

If Jesus is risen, and is therefore alive, who will ever be able to separate us from Him? Who will ever be able to deprive us of the love of Him Who has conquered hatred and overcome death? The Easter proclamation spreads throughout the world.

Copyright 2021 Sr. Margaret Kerry, FSP
Image: By Petar Milošević - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0