We also feed them because we don’t want them to go hungry, but if we had only one steak, we would give it to our children before giving it to a dog. We love our pets because they provide us with protection and companionship. But the ice cream derives no benefit from our love. When we eat ice cream, we derive the pleasure of tasting its sweetness. We love something or someone because we derive a benefit from that something or someone. Pope Benedict suggests that we can begin to sort out the complex issues surrounding love with a preliminary observation: Love is twofold. We indiscriminately say we love each of these. We seldom stop to reflect on the difference between loving our ice cream, loving our pets, loving our families and loving our God. “Today,” observes Pope Benedict, “the term ‘love’ has become one of the most frequently used and misused of words” ( Deus Caritas Est, no. But unfortunately, if we have misunderstood what love is, we will surely misunderstand who God is. Every Christian, and indeed many non-Christians, can agree on that. The very title, Deus Caritas Est, states a fundamental truth of the Christian faith: “God is love” (1 Jn 4:16). In fact, he reminds us that God has already revealed to us the answer: “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an expiation for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10). The world is forever asking the question, in poetry and song, “What is real love?” In his first encyclical from 2005, the late Pope Benedict XVI proposed an answer.

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