No gift higher than love
1 If I could speak all the human and angelic ton gues, but had no love, I would only be sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I had the gift of prophecy, knowing secret things with all kinds of knowledge, and had faith great enough to remove mountains, but had no love, I would be nothing.
3 If I gave ev erything I had to the poor, and even give up my body to be burned, if I am without love, it would be of no value to me.
4 Love is patient, kind, without envy. It is not boastful or arrogant. It is not ill-mannered nor does it seek its own interest.
5 Love overcomes anger and forgets offenses.
6 It does not take delight in wrong, but rejoices in truth.
7 Love excuses everything, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love will never end. Prophecies may cease, tongues be silent and knowledge dis appear.
9 For knowledge grasps something of the truth and prophecy as well.
10 And when what is perfect comes, everything imperfect will pass away.
11 When I was a child I thought and reasoned like a child, but when I grew up, I gave up childish ways.
12 Likewise, at present we see dimly as in a mirror, but then it shall be face to face. Now we know in part, but then I will know as I am known.
13 Now we have faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.
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Comments 1 Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13
• 13.1 I will show you a much better way (12:31). As the Corinthians marveled at the spectacular and wonderful things worked by the Spirit, Paul tells them that the only important thing is the ability to love.
Love or charity? At the beginning both words meant the same thing. Later on, the word “charity” came to mean the help given in the form of alms, although the giving of alms alone is not real love. On the other hand, for many people, true love is only that of a man and a woman. So it is irrelevant whether we say charity or love, but we have rather to clarify what love really is. Paul does just that in the present text.
If I could speak… if I had… To love is more important than performing miracles, more important than doing great things for others and dying for a cause, all of which can be done without love.
When I was a child. Already Paul outlines what he will explain in chapter 15when he speaks of our life after the resurrection. Just as the caterpillar must completely change itself to become a butterfly (not merely by sprouting wings), and just as a child’s game has no sense for an adult, so will it be for our present life: work, study, love, our understanding of God and the world, the life of the Church – all will be no more than a forgotten past. Paul experienced a love of God that invaded him and divinized his least desires, and he knew it was already God’s possession of him, which would be eternal: love would never end.
Faith, hope, love (v. 13). Paul quite often joins these three “virtues,” that is the three movements in the Christian soul. In no other place does he state this more clearly than here. There is no authentic love without faith and hope.
The greatest of those is love. Sometimes this sentence is used to misrepresent what is essential to Chris tian life. For many say, “I do good to my neighbor, what else does God ask of me?” It would not be difficult to prove that such love is very limited, selfish and impure. It is a “love” in which divine love lives in very cramped conditions and so is unable to transform our life. We would need, first of all, great hope in a Christian sense that is a passion for eternal things and then the yielding of ourselves to the Spirit who would complete his work of love in us. Love rea ches its perfection when we are in God: I will know him as he knows me. As long as we do not see God, love is immature; this is the time when love must grow through faith and the knowledge of God’s word; also through hope and perseverance as we follow Jesus poor, free and in the midst of trials.