The Year of Faith, begun by Pope Benedict XVI and continued by his successor, Pope Francis I, is a call to all Catholics to come to Christ in love, to participate in the most perfect and erotic love affair of all times. One the petitions for the Year of Faith is offered that this, "Year of Faith be a time to renew our love for Christ and His Church." This is because both Pope Benedict and his successor recognized the need which each and every person has to have a very personal relationship with Jesus, not only as a savior, but also as a lover. Mother Teresa of Calcutta says that, Jesus…loves you, but even more—He longs for you. He misses you when you don't come close. He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don't feel worthy." It is because of this yearning which Christ has for souls that He offers us those sacraments necessary for a relationship to flourish—the Eucharist, and Reconciliation. In order to take the fullest advantage of these abundant graces, however, it is first necessary to know the unadulterated, most perfect love which Christ offers unconditionally and without reserve.
"God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” So begins the encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est, by Pope Benedict XVI. In this letter, Pope Benedict clarifies what the meaning of 'being Christian' is, stating, "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and decisive direction." He refers back to the different names which the Greeks had for love; the love of agape, an unconditional, unifying, sacrificial, covenant love used in the Bible to signify the love of God for His people, the love of philia, also referred to as the love of friendship, and the love of eros, a kind of "divine madness" which referenced the passion of romantic love and desire. Pope Benedict offers an unheard of reconciling of the passion and perceived wrongful eroticness of eros and of the divine and unconditional agape. He identifies the intoxicated, unrestrained eros as a maddening lust, which is a, "fall, a degradation of man". This is a far and perverted cry from the Greek who believed eros to be a love which, "tears man away from his finite existence and enables him, in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine power, to experience supreme happiness" . The Pope then connects the relationship between the divine, promising an eternity of love, and the call to a "reality far greater and totally other than our everyday existence" . To reconcile the two, both of which are originally part of a divine love, he says that purification and growth in maturity are necessary to, "…heal it (eros), and restore its true grandeur"
The relationship between Christ and His Church is compared by St. Paul to that of an about to be wed or newly wed couple in his letter to the Ephesians, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her…" With this, he then goes more in depth saying, "Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies…for no man hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body." St. Paul emphasizes the fact that Christ's with the Church is founded on his relationship with each individual member of His Church and thus is essential to the Church as a whole. Finally, St. Paul draws a most distinct line between the marital relations of a man and a woman and of Christ with his Church, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined with his wife, and the two shall become one. This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church." Not only does Christ want to be a part in the lives of His Church in the most intimate way imaginable; he also wishes to become one with its members and with the Church as a whole.
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