LOVE NEVER COMES TO AN END

IV SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - 1 Corinthians 13:4-13

This Sunday, we are invited to listen to one of the most profound and beautiful passages of the New Testament: St. Paul’s hymn on love.

Before we proceed, we should ask ourselves what love is it that Paul speaks about? Nowadays, the word love is repeated endless times in such a way that it seems to have lost value and many times it implies a relationship in which we are sexually involved. To avoid confusion, the Greeks had different words for different kinds of love. For passionate and sexual love they used the word “eros”. For friendship, they used the word “philia”. For family love, they used the word “storge”. And for divine love - a selfless and boundless love, they used the word “agape” (αγαπη), translated in Latin by “caritas”. This is the love that we find in the New Testament and the love Paul wrote about.

First of all, love is a gift from God - the greatest gift,  which “has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Ro 5:5). In the first letter of John, we are told that God himself is love (1 Jn 4:8). That’s why love is eternal, as Paul says: “Love does not come to an end.” (1 Co 13:8). And we cannot claim to love God or to believe in Him if we don’t love others with whom we live. Indeed, “if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” (1 Co 13:2). Faith implies and demands to be committed to love, otherwise, it is a useless and dead faith. The claim that we are saved by faith alone is misleading and Paul leaves no doubt about the greatness of love: there are “faith, hope and love; and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Co 13:13). True faith manifests itself in love, and love implies commitment and service.

Love is the new commandment given to us by Jesus: “you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” And it is by love that we may be recognised as his disciples (Jn 13:34-35). Jesus is the role model, and we are called to love in the manner he loved, being ready to spend our lives at the service of others. Is it possible to love as Jesus loved? Or is it an impossible task? God loved us first and put in us His Spirit of love, so that strengthened by him we may grow in love until the day when he will make love in us come to perfection.

Paul presents the great qualities of love:

“Love is patient and kind; 

love does not envy or boast; 

it is not arrogant or rude. 

It does not insist on its own way; 

it is not irritable or resentful; 

it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, 

but rejoices with the truth. 

Love bears all things, 

believes all things, hopes all things, 

endures all things.” (from ESV).

Love is always a relationship. And God, being love, He is relationship: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Relationship leads to communion. The qualities of love presented by Paul are the qualities of a relationship where there is self-giving, commitment and service. I live for the other and in that my life comes to fulfilment.

May the Lord strengthen his love in us for us to live as his beloved children.