Tuesday, May 19, 2020

What is love?

There is a definition in the dictionary for love, but I'm not sure it really it's it on the head. Making a difference in the world, giving back, helping to build a better tomorrow, all that we talk about here in this blog - THAT is what love is all about. It is pretty hard to describe though.

Saint Paul wrote, in his second letter to the Corinthians "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."

I mention this because it just might come closer to giving us a good picture, and because this particular passage from Scripture is so often read in churches. The Blessed Apostle has more on the subject though.

He continues "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 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 put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love."

It's interesting to me that in earlier translations it says charity, rather than love. When you think of charity - of giving, isn't that something we do out of love? We all need to have faith and we certainly need hope, but that third thing, that wonderful glorious make-the-whole-world-better thing we call love - oh my! Yeah, it's pretty special!

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