THE WORD THIS WEEKEND

At Catholic mass this weekend, we hear the best of all readings.  Luke's gospel is about the ritual purification that the Holy Family completed by presentation in the Temple.  The Old Testament reading is from Jeremiah and is a story of the Lord talking to him.  This week I concentrate on the New Testament reading from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians; chapter 13. 

It's a reading you've heard many times.  Almost everyone chooses it for their wedding service.  It is his treatise on love.  What love is.  What love is not.  What we have with love.  What we do not have if we don't have love.  What love can do for us. 

You can find it easily by putting 1 COR 13:1 in your computer's search engine.   Read it today.  Read it often.  Read it to someone.

OK,  maybe you are that lazy,  here it is.

Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts.  But I shall show you a still more excellent way.

If I speak in human and angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.  And if I have the gift of prophecy, and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge;  if I
have all faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.  It is not jealous, it is not pompous.  It is not inflated, it is not rude.  It does not seek its own interests.  It is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury.  It does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.  If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.  For we know partially and we prophesy partially, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.  When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child;  when I became a man, I put aside childish things.  At present, we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face.  At present, I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.  So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

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