July 16 The Heart of St. Paul
St. Paul teaches that the highest and greatest action of a person is to love. Fame, wealth and power all fade away, but love remains in the end. We will ultimately be judged on how well we love and how much we loved God and our neighbor and nothing else, because this judgment contains everything. First Corinthians 13 is one of the most famous passages from St. Paul. It is his great hymn to love. He writes: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things. Love never fails.” (1Cor 13:4-8a)
Paul uses these words to express what he calls the “still more excellent way.” We often hear this reading at weddings. Do we ever stop to realize how hard it is to love in this way? How many times are we impatient with our spouse or want our own way? How often do we resent the good things that happen to other people? How often do people want to bail out of committments at the first sign of difficulty? If we examine our lives, it is a lot more dificult to live love than it is to speak about it. If this is the “still more excellent way” and it is shown to us by Christ, then we know it is going to entail suffering. Love means sacrifice. Love means the cross!
Paul admits that our love for God and one another is imperfect and frail. Love requires on the job training. Love requires making a selfless gift to God every day. The love Paul writes about is attainable for all of us. It is seen in the Saints and in the people we often do not even bother to notice. May Christ teach us a little bit more about love every day so that the ideal given to us from the heart of St. Paul will become for us a reality.
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