Holy Nights
1 Corinthians 12:31- 13:13
Strive to make the best out
of the gifts of grace working together.
Yet I will show the way that
is higher than all others.
If I speak out of the Spirit
with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, then my speaking
remains as sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. And if I had the gift of prophecy
and could speak of all the mysteries and could impart all knowledge and,
further, had the power of faith that removes mountains, yet am without love,
then I am nothing. And if I were to give away everything that is mine, and
lastly were to give away even my body for burning, yet am without love, then
all is in vain.
Love
makes the soul great;
Love
fills the soul with healing goodness;
Love
does not know envy;
It
knows no boasting;
It
does not allow falseness;
Love
does not harm that which is decent.
It
drives out self-seeking.
Love
does not allow inner balance to be lost.
It
does not bear a grudge.
It
does not rejoice over injustice.
It
rejoices only in the truth.
Love
bears all things,
Is
always prepared to have faithful trust.
It
may hope for everything and is all-patient.
If love is truly present, it
cannot be lost. The gift of prophecy will one day be extinguished, the wonder
of languages cease, clairvoyant insight come to an end. Our insight is
incomplete, incomplete is our prophecy.
But one day the perfect must
come, the complete consecration – aim; then the time of the incomplete is over.
When I was still a child, I
spoke as a child, and I felt and thought as a child. When I became a man, I put
childish ways behind me.
Now we still see things in
dark outlines, as in a mirror. Some day we will see everything face to face.
Now my insight is incomplete, but then I shall stand in the stream of true
insight, in which recognizing and being recognized are one.
We find permanence that bears
all future within it in the exalted triad:
In
faith
In
hope,
And
in love.
But the greatest of these is
love.
Holy Nights
1 Corinthians 12:31
- 13:13
Paul describes love as a soul’s way of being and acting. He
describes love as verb.
He speaks of the loving soul’s open spaciousness, a soul
aligned with truth, balanced and patient. A loving soul foregoes meanness and
selflessly supports decency. In other words, a soul filled with love is full of
good will. Love’s antitheses—spiteful
envy, arrogance and selfishness—bespeak a soul whose will is ill, a soul in
need of healing.
Love works as a healing force, both the love we receive, but
more importantly, the love we generate and give.
The mystery of the Act of Consecration of Man, the communion
service, is that demonstrates the process of learning how to love. First we
receive God’s love by hearing, receiving a portion of the life of Christ in the
Gospel. Then we undertake to make a real offering. We gather our purest
thoughts, our most Christened feelings, and our most energetic will, and we pour
them into the chalice along with wine and water, offering them all to the
Father as a chalice of healing. Our modest, meager act of love toward Him is
made strong and potent by Christ’s love joining ours. In Communion, the love we
offered to the Father returns to us multiplied, as the gracious, peaceful love that
Christ embodies in the bread and wine that enters us. We receive the healing medicine
for our will’s illness.
This is an enactment, a kind of foreshadowing of what will
one day be achieved. Right now we can only enact love partially, in outline, as
in a mirror. But one day we too will, in good will, work face to face with the
Master of Love, in Whom recognizing and being recognized are one.
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