Love is the Greatest

The word "Love" is used in so many ways to mean so many things, that it can become almost meaningless, or at least, confusing, to talk about loving someone or something.

In today's reading from Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth, we find an eloquent description of love in words that show what it looks like, and what loving comes to, in terms that are a clear and helpful way to discern whether what is being called love by someone else, or by us, is the "real thing." A great deal of what passes for human love is really idealizing another, or wanting something from another for ourselves. The kind of love described in these well known words, often read at weddings, is a love that can only blossom in the earth of Divine Love.

We love because and as God loves us. That is true love. And it is a gift, not something we earn. It is a gift of God to us, and a gift we pass on to others. God is Love, and so it is in God's nature to love. I believe it is also in our nature to love, and that when we are true to who we really are, we love as naturally as the rose blooms.

If I speak in the tongues of human being or of angels, but have not love,

I am just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,

and if I have faith so as to remove mountains,

but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind.

Love is not jealous or boastful.

Love is not arrogant or rude.

Love does not insist on its own way.

Love is not irritable or resentful.

Love does not take pleasure in wrong, but in what is right.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends.

As for prophecies, they will pass away.

As for tongues, they will cease.

As for knowledge, it too will pass away.

For our knowledge is imperfect, and our prophecy is imperfect.

But when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.

When I became an adult, I gave up childish ways.

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face.

Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.

So faith, hope, and love abide, these three.

But the greatest of these is love.

My reflections:

To me, it is clear that these words on love are in the context of a state of consciousness which Paul looks forward to as "when the perfect has come." And he emphasizes how important it is to love in the way he describes that love while we are still seeing as if through a mirror or glass, which in his times would not have been the kind of clear glass we now have. It is a good image for our incomplete knowledge and dim, distorted perspective compared to the full understanding and clarity of vision that will some day be ours.

It takes faith, hope, and love to live in a way that will bring us to that state of consciousness.

My prayer:

My love, God of love, is often so mixed in with lack of understanding and clarity, and I mistakenly value other things more than love. I forget that no matter how much knowledge I have, no matter how great my talents and gifts, or my faith, or my generosity, nothing is worthwhile without love. I open my heart more and more to Your love, knowing that it is in doing this that I will have true love to give to others. Amen