Deus Caritas - God is Love

By David Torkington -
When Charles Dickens wrote, "God is love," on the workhouse wall, he was of course being sarcastic. He knew there was no love in that workhouse, as Oliver Twist was about to find when he begged for more gruel.  Yet, Dickens was right;  unlike any other religion, Christianity is founded on love, not on our love of God, but as St John insisted, on his love of us.
The word Gospel means 'good news' because it is the best news that any human being can receive. It is the news that God's love has been embodied in the flesh and blood of the most perfect man who has ever walked on this earth, so that he could transmit it to us too. All those who came to love him, not only wanted to be close to him  and to be with him always, but to enter into him, to experience the love that had inspired them, and which animated him. 
After his Resurrection this became possible like never before. The enduring love of the first Christians became for them like a mystical ladder, enabling their love to rise to him and  his love to descend  into them. This love would gradually draw them up into him and into what was later called his Mystical Body. 
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