A Kernel of Pope Benedict's Encyclicals is in Pascal

"Not only do we not know God except through Jesus Christ, but we do not know ourselves except through Jesus Christ; we do not know life, death, except through Jesus Christ. Outside of Jesus Christ we do not know what our life is nor what our death is, nor what God is nor what we ourselves are.

"Thus, without the Scriptures, which only have Jesus Christ as their aim, we do not know anything at all, and we do not see anything but obscurity and confusion in the nature of God and in our own nature." Pensees, Edition de Michel Le Guern, 396

And I add (to complete this thought with Benedict's constant emphasis on experience)...

To know Christ one must love Him, and to love Him one must follow Him.

Now compare the Pensees quote above to Caritas in Veritate, 78 "Without God man neither knows which way to go, nor even understand who he is...'Apart from me [says the Lord] you can do nothing' (Jn 15:5) and...'I am with you always, to the close of the age' (Mt 28:20). Or again from the beginning of the encyclical

Man does not develop through his own powers, nor can development
simply be handed to him. In the course of history, it was often maintained that the creation of institutions was sufficient to guarantee the fulfillment of humanity's right to development. Unfortunately, too much confidence was place in those institutions, as if they were able to deliver the desired objective automatically. In reality, institutions by themselves are not enough, because integral human development is primarily a vocation, and therefore it involves a free assumption of responsibility in solidarity on the part of everyone. Moreover, such development requires a transcendent vision of the person, it needs God: without him, development is either denied, or entrusted exclusively to man, who falls into the trap of thinking he can bring about his own salvation, and ends up promoting a dehumanized form of development. Only through an encounter with God are we able to see in the other something more than just another creature, to recognize the divine image in the other, thus truly coming to discover him or her and to mature in a love that 'becomes concern and car for the other.' (Caritas in Veritate, 11)