You may be wondering why I chose this as the title of my blog.  The words "Dues Caritas Est" translate to "God is Love."  This is the title of the first encyclical written by our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI.  As I was reading this encyclical, one of the first points he touches on is Christ's call for us to Love our neighbor as ourself.  This has been a tough one for me lately, especially since we have had so many problems with our current neighbors.  They threatened us, threatened family members, vandalized our car, and as things progressed the hatred in my heart festered and continued to grow.  I thought terrible things about them, but never realized it was only harming me and my family.  They didn't even care.  The turning point came when I was watching a movie with my son Jack the other night.  It is called the Buttercream Gang.  We received this a gift from our friends the Witherspoons over a year ago, but never watched it (we don't watch too much TV these days.)  It was about a group of boys who go around helping others.  One of the boys moves away, joins a gang, turns bad, comes back and keeps being bad.  The old friends try to help him, but he wants to be bad.  It culminates it the old friend being nicer, and nicer no matter what, until the bad boy has a breakdown and runs away.  A year later they find out that he returned to his old bad gang, but turned them into a Buttercream Gang doing good and helping others.  The moral of this all was that God tells us to love our neighbor as ourself, and goes on to tell us that our neighbor includes our enemy.  If we love our enemies, we can make a difference in their lives.  Jack and I were discussing this, and he says to me, "Mom, maybe that's what we should do to our neighbors."  To which I replied,"Honey, I don't know what we should do about them."  Not to be dissuaded he replies, "No Mom, that IS what we should do to them."  So I decided we should give it a shot.  The next morning when I was leaving the house the husband was out in the front yard.  I smiled and said, "Good Morning."  To my surprise, he smiled back and said, "Good Morning."  This was from a man who was cursing at us just a few weeks ago.  My kids were in the car, and they were so excited.  We will continue praying for them, and maybe one day, they will be sitting next to us in church!    

So, God IS Love, and if we are going to change this world we have to take His love out into it.  Not just to the people in our home, or family who are easy to love, but to the very people who cause us the most strife.  After all, they too were created by God, and He will's that all should be saved.  It's not for us to decide who is worthy, only to decide if we are we willing to answer His call to love.

Here's a link to the encyclical.  It's worth reading.

 http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est_en.html