“God loved you first…”
You should take this sentence as literally as can be, and I try to do that. For it is truly the great power in our lives and the consolation that we need. And it’s not seldom that we need it.
He loved me first, before I myself could love at all. It was only because he knew me and loved me that I was made. So I was not thrown into the world by some operation of chance, as Heigegger says, and now have to do my best to swim around in this ocean of life, but I am preceded by a perception of me, an idea and a love of me. They are present in the ground of my being.
What is important for all people, what makes their life significant, is the knowledge they are loved. The person in a difficult situation will hold on if he knows, ‘Someone is waiting for me, someone wants me and needs me.’ God is there first and loves me. And that is the trustworthy ground on which my life is standing and on which I can myself construct it.
— Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) God and the World
May 5th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Funny that you would write about this today. My heart has been so heavy for that family in Austria. Yesterday, I found myself asking God where He was while all that misery was going on for nearly 25 years. Of course, I understand that God does not operate as we do and karma and the sins of man comes into play. It is just so sad because it always, always is the naive, the weak, and the helpless that suffer the most. My heart cries for Elizabeth and her children.
May 5th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
What is astounding is that the answers in the book are pretty much off the top of his head, and not the product of a long thinking and writing process, as in a typical book. He notes in the preface that he did review the transcript to clarify some language and add one or two things, but his answers here are essentially what he gave at the time of the interview.
Just typical Ratzinger brilliance, or the Holy Spirit giving a helping hand, or a little of both?
May 5th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
What is important for all people, what makes their life significant, is the knowledge they are loved.
Which begs the question of why, in Deus Caritas Est, the pope is so very carefully agnostic on the question of whether God loves anyone who does not have a y-chromasome. Does he intend that the Church’s teaching be that God only loves males? That God may or may not love some or all of the women that he has created, but the Church does not care one way or the other?
May 5th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Dear Miss A,
In the Lutheran Church we believe all Christians are saints. So, in the Creed, when we say, “I believe in the Communion of the Saints,” we are referring to the saints who were, the saints who are, and the saints who will be.
The implication is, not only did God love us before we were born; but, he had brought us into existence and had us in His loving presence before we were born. The only time we are not in it is while we are on Earth.
Regards,
Sarah
May 5th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Cathy, you’ll have to enlighten me on where the pope is “agnostic” on the issue of women. I have no idea where you see it.
Sarah - this is a pretty good representation of what Catholics think. I think to some extent it’s an issue of semantics. You say “saints” we say “holy” and over time have come to reserve “saint” for examples of particular or heroic holiness. But in the communion of saints - that “veil of witnesses” that Paul talks about, we are all one, both “canonized” and not.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
cathyf –
Huh?????????
May 6th, 2008 at 1:13 am
What does the Holy Father think of women? Well, as a small example, fairly recently, he spoke directly on the matter, saying that, in society, “a masculine mentality still persists that ignores the novelty of Christianity, which recognizes and proclaims that men and women share equal dignity and responsibility. There are places and cultures where women are discriminated against or undervalued for the sole fact of being women, where recourse is made even to religious arguments and family, social and cultural pressure in order to maintain the inequality of the sexes, where acts of violence are consummated in regard to women, making them the object of mistreatment and of exploitation in advertising and in the consumer and entertainment industry. Faced with such grave and persistent phenomena the Christian commitment appears all the more urgent so that everywhere it may promote a culture that recognizes the dignity that belongs to women, in law and in concrete reality.”
Sounds pretty clear to me — the Pope, the Church, and God love women — all women — very much.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:47 am
[…] God loved you first… […]
May 6th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
I never claimed that the pope is agnostic on the entire expansive subject of women. I claimed that Deus Caritas Est is agnostic on the very narrow question of whether God does or does not love women. Go read the document. Read what it says. It is full of luminous descriptions of the love that God has for men, and the proper response of men to that wondrous love. And thundering silence as to any relationship between God and women.
It’s not that women go without mention. Read sect. 11. Women have a function. They are the object of men’s love; a husband’s love for his wife enriches and expands his love for God, and his appreciation of God’s love for him. None of that requires God to have any particular regard for the wife, though, and the Church carefully avoids any mention of the subject.
Bender links to WOMAN AND MAN, THE HUMANUM IN ITS ENTIRETY. Again, read what it says. It is, in fact, a very compact summary of Mulieris Dignitatem. A very carefully constructed argument that says that because of the relationship between God and men, men are called to loving and respectful relationships with women.
It is a brilliant theological construct. It would be simple and straightforward to teach that women must be treated with dignity if the Church first taught that it was only because God knew each woman and loved each woman that she was made. But the Church has instead managed to teach that God demands respectful and dignified treatment of women purely based upon the love between God and men, and the damage to that relationship caused when men treat women disrespectfully or allow others to treat women badly.
Benedict tells us: “For it is truly the great power in our lives and the consolation that we need. And it’s not seldom that we need it.” To which I give the classic Tonto rejoinder to the Lone Ranger: “What mean we, Kemo Sabe?”
May 7th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I re-read the thing and find - as I did before - that when Benedict is talking about “man” and “he,” he is mostly talking about mankind and when he distinctly talks about woman it is to make the real and obvious distinctions that make woman the completer of incomplete humanity, by her very differences and distinctions. Man and women share a great deal in the nature of basic humanity, and all that they share is subsumed under the heading “man” - which is the classicist way - while the distinctiveness of women is mentioned pointedly because it is the way in which male/humanity and female/humanity differ.
I don’t have a problem with the holy father discussing all of this from a masculine “predominance”, it is simply the way it was done prior to the last 40 years. Had he used the word “humanity” a little more I’m sure some would feel better about it, but from a classic point of view, it’s the same thing.