Despite my impression that the length of Pope Benedict’s messages is getting shorter, his latest one, for the coming season of Lent, is still an elegant theological discourse on the two virtues of faith and charity.
Starting from a raft of Biblical quotations and references, the Holy Father demonstrates how these two are “intimately linked,” how the love of God is the source of our faith, and how our faith enables us to love God and the neighbour.
“Essentially, everything proceeds from Love and tends towards Love. God’s gratuitous love is made known to us through the proclamation of the Gospel. If we welcome it with faith, we receive the first and indispensable contact with the Divine, capable of making us “fall in love with Love”, and then we dwell within this Love, we grow in it and we joyfully communicate it to others.”
An excellent read, and a text we can all study and reflect upon as we enter Lent.
My Dutch translation is available here.
Photo credit: l’Osservatore Romano
In Caelo et in Terra 
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