Deus Caritas Est

Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical:

Deus Caritas Est

Opening paragraph:

1. "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him" (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First Letter of John express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith: the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny. In the same verse, Saint John also offers a kind of summary of the Christian life: "We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us".

Read it! It is here for all of us... don't let it pass you by. I intend to go through it more thoroughly this weekend when I have more time, but what I have read so far is very good, and I find it to be very easy to read. Truly our modern, misguided notions on the nature of love could be said to lay at the root of social evils.

If you're interested, Jimmy Akin mentions an mp3 version of the encyclical (17MB), which is probably best listened to with the actual text in front of you.