Pauline Reflections 03 - 26th July 2008

LOVE IN 1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-13

The Christian vocation is a vocation of love, for he serves a God “who is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him”
1 John 4:16. Pope Benedict XVI re-echoed these words in his encyclical Deus Caritas - God is love, emphasising our common vocation of love and the church as a community of love. 

This very important theme is highly emphasised by Paul in 1 Corinthians  13:1-13. Perhaps, Paul dedicated this chapter to love to remind his hearers and us all to have a right and proper attitude to this great theological virtue, the mother of all virtues. 

The love in question here is different from Eros - a sensual and physical form of expressing love. It is also different from Philia - a love of friendship - best friends in the fellowship of being with loved ones. Love here for Paul is Agape - an unlimited and unrestricted decision to love and seek the wellbeing of someone else.  This love is a genuine expression of care and support without restriction. It sees the need to love and is eager to fulfil it, and it becomes a quest and expression that has no end to it.  

Jesus’ teaching on love is firmly rooted in this understanding, hence he commands us to even dare to agape our enemies. Paul, the faithful disciple, picked this gospel theme and challenged his audience to first have agape and be deeply rooted in it. Without agape, all the other gifts of the Holy Spirit mean nothing. “If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
1 Corinthians 13:1-3

In the verses that follow, verses 4-7, Paul gave the characteristics of agape by personification and enumeration, defining agape by what it does or does not do. “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, love is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, and it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.” 

The final paragraph, 1 Corinthians 13:8-13, announces the central message that love is greater than the other two theological virtues of faith and hope. All three are interrelated, but love never fails.

Prayer

Lord, grant me the grace to live my vocation of love; to love you and to love my neighbour. May I express this love in word and deed in the daily circumstances of my life. Amen