Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians should be familiar.  One hears it all the time at weddings.  And it’s even been used at funerals – most famously, perhaps, at the funeral for Princess Diana, where it was read by Tony Blair.  We hear it so much, we feel as if we know it.  But do we?  Like love itself, this passage is often misunderstood, and misinterpreted.

The truth is that Paul wasn’t writing about marriage, or romance.  That was the farthest thing from his mind.  In the year 56, when Paul was writing, the church in Corinth was a mess.  There was feuding and factions and finger-pointing.  The early church was actually full of dissension and disagreement.  (I know: it’s hard to believe that the church would have people who disagree about things.  But it’s true).

Paul wrote this beautiful letter to tell them, in effect, grow up.  That isn’t what it means to be a Christian.  Being a Christian means, quite simply, to love.  Not physical love, not romantic love.  But something that the Greeks called “agape.”  Sacrificial giving.  Charity.  That is the love Paul was describing.  And so he offers this blueprint for how to live that love.

Twenty years after Christ’s death and resurrection, Paul presents the overarching idea that lies at the heart of the gospel.  It is love.  For love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  It never fails.

Read that passage over and you realize: this is not only what it means to be Christian.  This is what it means to be Christ.  This is what it means to open one’s arms and bleed for another, and die for another.  This is agape.  This is love.

And yes, that kind of love also, I think, makes the best marriages.  Today, we’re challenged to think of love the way Paul did, and the way Jesus did: a pouring out, an emptying of everything for another.  For Christ, it was nails and thorns.  It was a sacrifice beyond measure.  It sounds impossible to give that much.  And yet, even today, people do.

Do you know that one out of six Americans get their health care from a Catholic institution, or that more than one out of five Americans living in poverty are served by Catholic Charities?  Do you know Catholic schools are the largest provider of private K-to-12 education in the country, with almost two million students, and the largest provider of private higher education, enrolling nearly one million students?

Do you know that the Catholic Church is the largest re-settler of refugees in the country?  That Catholic Relief Services serves nearly 100 million people in need in 93 countries?  That the international Society of St. Vincent de Paul serves over 14 million people in need in the United States alone each year?

Our faith calls for each of us to do something more.  To be something more for the person next to me in the pew, or for the homeless and the hungry in downtown Seattle, or for any among us who are hurting, or alone, or grieving, or angry.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is for each of us.  It is a gift.  And one we are meant to pass on to others.  With, of course, “lots of love.”

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor