Pope at Angelus: Love for God must overflow into love for others
At the Sunday Angelus, Pope Leo XIV said love for God must overflow into love for others. Reflecting on the Gospel’s greatest commandment, he described love as a personal response to God, who loves humanity first. The Pope said love of God and love of neighbour are inseparable, and that love gives faith, good works and hope their essence. He invited the faithful to ask for a new heart capable of living out the commandments, entrusting the prayer to Mary’s intercession.
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Pope Leo XIV used his Oct. 25 Angelus reflection on the greatest commandment to describe love of God and love of neighbor as inseparable: faith must lead to care for others. He also appealed for peace amid humanitarian suffering in Yemen, a terrorist attack in Jordan, and continuing wars, and urged prayer for the upcoming interreligious gathering in Assisi. 1 2
Reflecting on the Gospel account in which Jesus is asked which commandment is greatest, Leo highlighted the command to love God with all one’s heart, soul, and mind. He said that knowing God exists is not enough: God seeks a personal relationship with each person, and love cannot be imposed as a command. 1 4
The Pope described authentic love for God as a response to God’s love, which comes first and calls for commitment of the whole person. From that relationship, he said, people can learn to see themselves and their neighbors through Christ’s eyes, overcoming selfishness and turning their lives toward others. 2 4
Leo connected the command to love one’s neighbor with love of God, saying both arise from the same source. He cited St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, who wrote that “Love alone” moves the Church’s members to act; without love, he said, faith would lose its essence, good works would become mere moralism, and hope would be in vain. 1 4
He said people cannot truly love their neighbors except as children of the same Father, who loved humanity first through Jesus. He concluded by asking the faithful to seek “a new heart” capable of living the greatest commandment and entrusted the prayer to Mary’s intercession. 1 2
After the Marian prayer, Leo expressed concern about the humanitarian situation in Yemen, particularly in Taiz, where people lack food, water, and medical care. He called for an end to hostilities and for the people of Yemen and the wider region to be able to live in peace. 2
He also prayed for those killed or injured in a terrorist attack on worshippers at the Orthodox Church of St. George in Hamoud, Jordan, and voiced solidarity with the Christian community and the country. 3
Leo urged continued prayer for peace ahead of the Oct. 27 gathering in Assisi, marking 40 years since the meeting convened by St. John Paul II. He had been expected to attend but, following recent surgery, was advised to avoid travel; he invited the faithful to join the church and religious leaders gathering there in spirit. 2 3
How does divine love ground Christian charity and moral action?
Divine love grounds Christian charity because Christian moral life begins not with a human effort to earn God’s favor, but with God’s love given first. The Father’s love is revealed in Christ’s self-gift and poured into believers by the Holy Spirit. Charity is the grace-enabled participation in that love: it turns the Christian toward God and, inseparably, toward the neighbor. Moral action is therefore both a response to being loved and the concrete expression of that love in choices and deeds.
Christian charity is more than natural affection, generosity, or warm feeling. It is a theological virtue—that is, a God-given capacity to love God and others in relation to God. Its source is the life of the Trinity: love comes from the Father, is revealed in the crucified and risen Son, and is given to us through the Holy Spirit. The Christian does not simply imitate divine love from the outside; by grace, he or she is drawn into it and enabled to love with it.
This means Christian moral action is a response to a gift. A scholarly account captures the sequence as “action follows upon being loved”: Christ’s self-giving love addresses human freedom and elicits a response. The point is not that every action automatically becomes good once someone feels loved, but that God’s prior gift makes a transformed way of acting possible.
Charity does not replace the virtues or make moral discernment unnecessary. It animates and orders the virtues, helping them work together toward the good. Prudence, for example, considers how to act well in a particular situation; justice concerns what is due to others; fortitude and temperance help a person remain rightly ordered amid difficulty and desire. Charity gives these virtues their distinctly Christian orientation: they are exercised in love of God and for the good of the neighbor. Pope John Paul II summarizes this teaching:
Through the power of the Holy Spirit, charity shapes the moral activity of the Christian; it directs and strengthens all the other virtues, which build up the new man within us. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity, which ‘binds everything together in perfect harmony’ (Col 3: 14); it is the form of the virtues; it articulates and orders them among themselves; it is the source and the goal of their Christian practice.”
To say charity is the “form” of the virtues means it gives their practice its proper Christian character and direction. It does not mean that good intentions make any chosen means acceptable. Charity shapes moral action; it does not turn an unjust or harmful act into a loving one simply because a person describes it that way. This fits the teaching that love and obedience belong together: keeping Christ’s commandments is a concrete expression of love, not a rival to it.
Charity has two inseparable dimensions: love of God and love of neighbor. Love of God is primary, but it cannot be genuine while deliberately rejecting the neighbor. The neighbor is not an obstacle to spiritual life or merely an instrument for proving devotion; loving others is one of the ways love for God becomes visible in action. John Paul II points to the force of 1 John: claiming to love God while hating one’s brother is a contradiction, because the same divine love bears fruit in both relations.
This also explains why Christian charity reaches beyond private kindness. It includes the neighbor’s real good, and so has implications for how people treat the poor and fulfill duties of justice. One scholarly discussion describes justice, when elevated by grace, as retaining the responsibility to render what is due while being shaped by the broader love Christ teaches. Charity, then, does not excuse neglect of justice; it deepens and directs the pursuit of right relationships.
Because charity is given by God, Christian moral life is not reducible to self-improvement or rule-keeping. But because the gift is meant to shape a person’s life, charity must be enacted. It appears in concrete choices: keeping Christ’s commands, seeking another person’s good, acting justly, giving generously, and persevering in love when it is difficult. Christian love includes more than the minimum one might do to avoid wrongdoing; it can also express itself in freely offered generosity. The action remains a real human response, but one made possible and sustained by divine grace.
In short, divine love is the source, pattern, and sustaining power of Christian charity; charity is the principle that orders moral virtues and makes love of neighbor the lived expression of love of God. Christian moral action is neither mere rule-following nor a vague appeal to good intentions. It is a graced response to God’s prior love, taking concrete form in faithful obedience and the active pursuit of the neighbor’s good.