"For God so loved the world"
- POPE BENEDICT XVI
The worst anxiety of all... is the fear of not being loved.
Hope is the fruit of faith, we have said: in it our life stretches itself out towards the totality of all that is real, towards a boundless future that becomes accessible to us in faith. This fulfilled totality of being to which faith provides the key is a love without reserve — a love that is an immense affirmation of my existence and that discloses the fullness of all being to me in its breadth and depth. In it the Creator of all things says to me: All that is mine is yours (Lk 15:31)....
This love opens up to me the whole of everything, which through love becomes "paradise." The worst anxiety of all... is the fear of not being loved, the loss of love: despair is thus the conviction that one has forfeited all love forever, the horror of complete isolation. Hope in the proper sense of the word is thus the reverse: the certainty that I shall receive that great love that is indestructible and that I am already loved with this love here and now.
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Acknowledgement
Pope Benedict XVI. "For God so loved the world." from The Yes of Jesus Christ: Exercises in Faith, Hope and Love (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991).
Published under a fair use provision.
The Author
Pope Benedict XVI is the author of Jesus of Nazareth, Vol II, Jesus of Nazareth, Vol I, Caritas in Veritate: Charity in Truth, Saved in Hope: Spe Salvi, God Is Love: Deus Caritas Est,The End of Time?: The Provocation of Talking about God, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, Salt of the Earth: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church at the End of the Millennium, God and the World: Believing and Living in Our Time, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, The Spirit of the Liturgy, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Introduction to Christianity, Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, Behold the Pierced One, and God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life.
