Fr. George Parsenios (HCHC ’96)
"Love is Patient; love is kind.” So says St. Paul in today’s epistle reading, taken from First Corinthians 13. These well-known verses are famously printed on posters and plaques—even refrigerator magnets—and they are often read at Protestant and Catholic weddings all over America. Everyone knows the verses and everyone loves them. But few understand them. Far from being a sentimental meditation on romantic love, these famous lines are a rhetorically powerful rebuke to a divided church. Love may be patient and kind, but the Corinthians were neither. They battled against one another over who had more wealth, who had more knowledge of God, or who had deeper spiritual experiences. Paul told the Corinthians that “love is not jealous or boastful” because he had to correct them a few chapters earlier for jealous striving (3:3), and for boasting about spiritual gifts (4:7). He told them that love is slow to judge (13:5) because he commanded them previously to stop dragging each other before pagan judges in public courts (6:1-11). And he said that love hopes all things (13:7), because the Corinthians had a shaky hope in the Resurrection of the dead (15:13). When he wrote that “love is patient and kind,” St. Paul was not poetically reflecting on love with pretty words. He was admonishing a strife-ridden community and confronting their arrogance. We are correct, therefore, to associate these verses with weddings and family concord, not because of how they make us feel, but because of how they make us act. Not sentimental emotions, but real self-sacrifice is the cornerstone of a strong marriage, a firm friendship and any lasting relationship. Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, clergy and laity show their love for one another not by what they say, but by what they do.
Fr. George Parsenios is Professor of New Testament at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. www.hchc.edu
