Last Sunday’s sermon finished with these words: In addition to the liturgical life and the Sacraments, the Church has always taught of the necessity of examining our conscience, and doing so regularly. Preparing for Lent is a time to examine our conscience. It is a time to take inventory about ourselves. It is a time to take inventory about our habits, and whether we have unholy habits, unholy vices, that keep us from being good soil. To borrow from Saint John: If we say we have no vices, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our vices, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our vices, and cleanse us from the unrighteousness of our vices.
Today, on the Sunday before Lent, the Church sets before us the subject of charity, the older translation of the more modern word “love.” “Charity” is the English translation of the Latin word, caritas, which means “love,” that is, the sacrificial love demonstrated by Christ and embodied by Him. The Church brings before the subject of charity, or love, to remind us that all works of repentance, of turning to God, can be of no avail unless they begin and end in the love of God. On Sunday last we had the account of St. Paul’s apostolic labours, but in the Epistle for today, he tells us of how little avail all our works and labours must be without charity.
It has been said that the thirteenth chapter of Saint Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians is the most important chapter of the Bible. The reason such a high claim is made about this chapter, which is our Epistle reading today, is that it teaches us two fundamental things. The first is that it teaches profoundly about Jesus Christ and Him Crucified. And the second is that it teaches us how to respond to Christ’s blessed Passion and precious Death. In understanding Paul’s holy doctrine of love, we know more about Christ and we know more about ourselves – more about our Saviour and about being His disciples—more about our King and about what it means to be crowned—about the Perfect Love of Jesus to which we aspire to imitate in our lives every day.
We know that Paul’s doctrine of love teaches about Jesus Christ and Him crucified because, as Paul says of love, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” This describes perfectly our Lord, Who bore all our sins on the Cross, believed all that His Father had given Him, hoped for the salvation of all, and endured spitting, mocking, torture, and disbelief in Him all while keeping in Himself the peace which passes all understanding. In support of this, we have Saint John, who said, “God is love.” The Father is love, the Son is love, the Holy Ghost is love. And we know that Jesus is Himself the perfect pattern of love again from Saint John, who records our Lord says, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” We are His friends, because all that Jesus heard from His Father He has made known to us.
As Paul’s doctrine teaches us about Jesus, his doctrine teaches us about ourselves as disciples of Jesus. How easily this is seen by remembering our Lord’s commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and … that Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” We are to love the Father and we are to love our neighbor. In both cases we are to imitate our Lord’s love for the Father and our Lord’s love for every human being. No matter what words we say, without love we are nothing. No matter what wisdom and knowledge we might have, without love we are nothing. No matter what we do, even if we give our body to be burned, if we do not have love, are nothing. This is simply to say with with love we have life in the Holy Spirit, but without love we are spiritually dead, as if we never knew of Jesus, nor He us. Jesus told the five foolish virgins “I do not know you” and shut the door to them because they did not have love and perform acts of mercy, acts of love, in their life.
It is true that with the profound account given us of love in the example of Jesus Christ, we may well feel overwhelmed at our great lack of it, as we come to fathom the depths of our need, and measure ourselves by Our Lord’s perfect pattern. Our great relief now, in Lent, and all our days is to look to Christ in prayer; in prayer with regard to every particular of our daily short-comings; and what we derive from dwelling on the fact of our vices and sins, and thus our falling short of Christ’s expectation of us, is the assurance, that if we are faithful in Him and genuine in our desire to follow Him, to put off our old man and put on the new garments of Christ, if we are like the blind man who simply cried out to Jesus and said, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me,” He will hear us. Jesus Christ has taught us that all our doings without love, without charity, are worth nothing; hence we ask God to send His Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts the gift of Christ’s mercy, the gift of divine love, which is the true bond of peace and all virtues—indeed that the Holy Ghost give us the gift of Christ in our hearts, that we may continue to conceive in our hearts the Eternal Word of the Father, Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the same Father and the same Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
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