NOTES for Co1 13:4-7

These words of the apostle Paul occupy an utterly exceptional place in Holy Scripture, because in them the apostle speaks of what matters most, without which there is no Christianity. And it is precisely because what matters most in our faith is what the apostle speaks of here that our faith grants us life. He places many important, necessary and beautiful things alongside love: faith that moves mountains; the gift of prophecy and insight into mysteries; other gifts of the Holy Spirit — and all of these pale and recede into the background beside love. Judging by what the apostle goes on to say, for him love is eternity today. It is the life of the age to come, which did not wait for us to reach that future, but burst powerfully into our colourless existence.

These astonishing words, like the whole of chapter 13 of the First Letter to the Corinthians, speak of love not as a state of the human heart or spirit, still less as feelings, changeable and unreliable. What the apostle writes of cannot even be called a relationship between persons. In his words, love is that which works mysteriously within us and becomes a law inscribed on the tablets of flesh that are our hearts. In the apostle's words, Love becomes a person: it is Christ Himself, living in His disciples.

The apostle speaks of how love is expressed in our lives, of how it manifests itself. It is a great mercy of the Holy Spirit that He inspired Paul to write these words. For everything the apostle writes of consists of actions, attitudes towards others and deeds that we can try to put into practice. Clearly, much of this is beyond human strength, and much entails genuine suffering of the Cross. Yet the apostle's words are a path along which we can travel to open the doors of our hearts to God.

Today's reading from the Epistle to the Corinthians is often called the hymn to love. The apostle Paul tells us that without love nothing has meaning. In the opening verses he describes utterly astonishing gifts: speaking in the tongues of angels, the gift of prophecy, faith able to move mountains... How wonderful! But without love... Let us consider what becomes of all these gifts without love. Speaking in tongues? But with whom would one speak without love? Without love, it simply makes no sense to speak either with people or, still less, with angels. Moving mountains? To what end? Just like that, for aesthetic effect? For lack of anything else to do? Without love, moving mountains would be an utterly meaningless occupation. Love is the only thing that gives meaning to every gift and every action. And the most frightening thing is that love cannot be “invented” or summoned up in one's heart by artificial means... Let us ask the Holy Spirit to transform our hearts of stone into living hearts of flesh and to grant us love.

Continuing his reflections on the Church, Paul composes a true hymn to love. In composing it, the apostle undoubtedly must have remembered the Savior's words about the commandment of love, spoken during the Last Supper, words Paul could not have failed to know. And yet the assertion that any efforts are meaningless in the absence of love makes one stop and think (vv. 1-3). After all, the matter is undoubtedly the actions of a righteous person, and actions that are deeply motivated. Why, then, are they worthless in themselves, despite the rightness of the motivation, if there is no love? The answer to this question is not hard to find in the second part of the hymn (vv. 4-7). Indeed, to treat people as described here is completely impossible if one remains within the framework of our not yet transfigured world. One can love this way only by dwelling in the Kingdom and living its life.

Then it becomes clear what love the apostle is speaking about in the first part of his remarkable hymn. The matter is not the love that is possible even among fallen people in our not yet transfigured world. The matter is the love of the Kingdom, the love that permeates all relationships here, being their foundation and driving force. In our not yet fully transfigured world, love is possible as an act of the will and as a relationship. We love those to whom we actively wish good.

But the very fabric of interpersonal relationships in our not yet transfigured world has a different nature; it is not identical with love, though sometimes it can bear love. In the Kingdom, however, every relationship is by definition an act of love. No other forms of relationship are possible there in principle; the nature of the Kingdom does not allow them. And if a person does not have such love, it means only one thing: such a person has not yet touched the Kingdom. Therefore, whatever he may do, even from the highest motives, he cannot enter the Kingdom until love becomes for him the sole spiritual foundation of all life and all relationships, both with God and with neighbors. The sign of this change can be the kind of attitude toward life and toward people that is described in the second part of the hymn Paul wrote.