Christianity is the religion of love. Only in Christianity does God reveal himself to the world by becoming himself human and giving himself to us completely, even to a brutal, ignominious death. Other religions profess belief in God or a divine principle and extoll sacrifice, but in no other religion does God show his love by handing himself over to his creatures as an example of love.

The heart of Christianity is the heart of Jesus Christ, which is both human and divine. Here, the central reality is not some Abstract Principle, some Impersonal Force or some Distant Diety, not some Legalistic, Beancounting Judge or Capricious Emperor. The central reality is a person who’s very being is to be a Lover, the person of Jesus Christ. Christ reveals the transcendent love of God and invites us to enter into the most intimate relationship with him.

Without Christ’s love, life is selfishness and decay, and man can have no peace within himself. Without love there is only loneliness. With love, men can enter into communion with each other to build true unity and lasting peace.

Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ the Redeemer “fully reveals man to himself.” If we may use the expression, this is the human dimension of the mystery of the redemption. In this dimension man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belong to his humanity. In the mystery of the redemption man becomes newly “expressed” and, in a way, is newly created. He is newly created! “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”(64) The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly – and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being – he must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ.

(John Paul II, The Redeemer of Man, no. 10)

The centrality of love in the Christian religion is its greatness and the simplest way to know its truth. Look within yourself and ask, “Do I want to love? Do I at least want to want to love?”