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The greatest work of charity is evangelisation, Pope Benedict XVI declares in his Lenten message for 2013, in which he cautions against the tendency to reduce the term “charity” to solidarity or simply humanitarian aid.
Preaching the Gospel, the Pope says, is actually the greatest act of charity, since it involves “the highest and the most integral promotion of the human person”.
“There is no action more beneficial — and therefore more charitable — towards one’s neighbour than to break the bread of the Word of God, to share with him the Good News of the Gospel, to introduce him to a relationship with God,” he says.
“When we make room for the love of God, then we become like him, sharing in his own charity,” the Pope said.
“If we open ourselves to his love, we allow him to live in us and to bring us to love with him, in him and like him.”
Less than two weeks before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, the Pope’s message was presented at a press conference in Rome.
Cardinal Robert Sarah, the president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, underscored the Pope’s insistence that Christian faith cannot be seen as separate from, or in conflict with, charitable work.
The cardinal said that the mistaken tendency to see a separation between these two virtues can take several forms.
“It is a misunderstanding,” Cardinal Sarah said, “to emphasise the faith, and the liturgy as its privileged channel, so strongly as to forget that they are intended for actual persons who have their own needs.”
However, he continued, it is also wrong to think “that the Church is some kind of great act of philanthropy or solidarity that is purely human.”
Finally, he said: “A further misconception is to divide the Church into a ‘good Church’ — the one of charitable action — and a ‘bad Church’ — the one that insists on the truth, that defends and protects human live and the universal moral values.”
Sources:
The Holy See (Pope’s message)
Image: Catholic News Agency
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