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The Hymn of Love as a Meditation on Death
Homily St. Joseph Parish, Detroit
Today we will meditate on the passage we just read from St. Paul in Corinthians, his hymn on love. Many young couples joyfully come to the altar of God with their hearts full of fervor and joy, dreams and even worries about the future, to enter into marriage; and this passage is one of the most popularly chosen. “If I have not love, I am nothing… Love is patient, love is kind… love bears all things…” It is popular, and rightly so. I wish to look at this passage, however, in a wider context than that of marriage. This is the love that we are to have to all our neighbors, not just towards spouse and family and friends; indeed, it’s the love we also must have for God. This love is full of the Holy Spirit; it comes from God, and returns back to him, like rain that comes down on a field, and eventually raises up in the clouds to fall yet again. It’s soul is not human, not a natural thing, but a supernatural thing and divine. Therefore we have a different name for it than just “love,” we call this divine love “charity.” Love is affection, charity is decision; love is attraction, charity is impulse; love lives and thrives in the communion of persons, yet charity is born of communion with God, especially by sacraments and prayers. Sometimes, however, we use the words interchangeably; but the realities are distinct, and, using the terms, let us understand that here St. Paul refers to the love of neighbor proper of the saint and informed with the Spirit of the Father and the Son. One impressive aspect of this passage on love is that it continually goes over the reality of time and death, but yet never names one or the other. Eternity lasts forever and challenges time, in which all things pass away. Love lifts man up from the passing quality of this world and transports him to the eternity where God is. Therefore, if one has everything, but not love, he has nothing. Our experiences of this would fill many hours of worthy conversation, how we all know those who chose money over family, fame over conscience, pleasure over promise, and evil over good. Those who renounce love have nothing and are nothing, and they pass. So St. Paul’s reflections on love bring us face to face with the fact that our soul will separate from the body and leave this world and all that is in it behind. Furthermore, he asserts that our current state will pass away, and love alone will remain. So if one has even the spiritual gifts which are out of the ordinary, say prophecy, infused knowledge of languages like the Apostles at Pentecost, great gifts of prayer, the stigmata, bilocation, visions, locutions or the rest, all of these things will pass, St. Paul says. When will they pass? He does not state the obvious, but the obvious is that these gifts will pass when we die. In this world, we are as children, but in heaven, we will be as adults, with greater knowledge and more perfect deeds. In this world we know God, but very weakly and through sacrament and mystery; but when we die, we will see him face to face. And so the experience of death casts light on the nature of life, and our reflection upon our own death should therefore lead us not to depression or grim thoughts or despair or discouragement, but to love, specifically the love of charity. Therefore, love is not social activism, it is not “filling in the check boxes” in what I am stuck doing for my neighbor even when I don’t want to, it’s not just giving to those who don’t have, nor is it a feeling. Charity is greater than these things: it is an imitation of God, a true care for the eternal and temporal good of others, it is a relationship between two people, yet not for the relationship’s sake, but rather for God’s sake. So let us not be foolish by longing for gifts which don’t last. Dear brothers and sisters, dear children of the heavenly Father, love God above all things, and for heaven’s sake, love one another. |