great devotion

If you have time, and want to, please read the following. It was written by a friend, Father Roy Rihn, of San Antonio:

Reading: I Corinthians 13:1-13
Today’s Second Reading gave us one of the gems of world literature: St. Paul’s paean to love in First Corinthians. It ranks right up there with Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy in Hamlet and with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Love! One of the world’s essential needs, yet so full of mystery. Have you ever wondered why, with all our progress in science and knowledge, so many of the world’s truly essential needs remain impenetrable mysteries? For instance, energy. Our scientists know what energy does, but not one of them can tell us what energy is. We know, thanks to the immortal equation E=Mc2, that everything in the universe is energy in one form or another – but nobody knows what energy is. Or take light. Light is everywhere. There could be no life without light. We know what light does. But nobody knows what light is. The overriding life’s goal of Albert Einstein, the consensus greatest mind of the 20th century, was to understand what light is. He never did. Or time! Almost anybody can tell you what time it is, but nobody can tell you what time is.

Love! Talked about, sung about, written about by so many, love is also an impenetrable mystery. We know what love does, but nobody can tell us what love is. St. Paul’s essay on love that we heard so ably presented a short while ago confirms this. He first tells us how essential, how necessary love is. Then he tells us what love does (or refrains from doing). But he never tells us what love is. He couldn’t, not even under divine inspiration. The best he can do is, first, tell us how essential, how necessary love is; and, secondly, how we can recognize love by what it does or does not do. Let’s take a closer look at this.

First, Paul tells us that even our most praiseworthy actions must be motivated by love before they can have any meaning, any value. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.” In none of this is Paul trying to tell us what love is – he is simply telling us that nothing we do, even the most praiseworthy, has any value or meaning unless it is motivated by love.

Second, Paul tells us what authentic love can do in some of our ordinary life situations. “Love is patient; love is kind. It does not envy; it does not boast; it is not proud. Love is never rude; love is not self-seeking; it is not easily angered; love keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not rejoice over wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” Note again that Paul does not give a definition of love in any of this: he is not trying to tell us what love is (even when he uses the verb “is”). Throughout, he is simply telling us what real love does – or refrains from doing – in the daily lives of Christians.

It is so safe, so non-threatening, to hear all this about that impersonal abstract we call “love”. But really to hear what Paul is saying, substitute the first person singular pronoun – the one all of us use hundreds of times a say – substitute “I” for “love”. So let’s do this. I am going to pause after each statement in order to let it “sink in” to my own full awareness – and perhaps into yours.

I am patient … I am kind … I am never envious of others … I never brag on myself … I am never proud … I am never rude to others … There is never any self-seeking in anything I do or say … I don’t easily get angry … I let go of the wrongs others do me and forget them … I never take delight in the sins and failings of others … I trust everyone … I never lose hope … I never give up or cop out …

I don’t know about you, but there were very few (if any) of the above statements that I could say honestly. I am a long, long way from loving and forgiving like that. But I do not lose heart, because I know that God loves me unconditionally, just as I am, and forgives me unconditionally.