{"id":1156,"date":"2016-01-31T12:04:56","date_gmt":"2016-01-31T12:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sjcmetheology.wpengine.com\/?p=1156"},"modified":"2016-01-31T12:04:56","modified_gmt":"2016-01-31T12:04:56","slug":"a-still-more-excellent-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/a-still-more-excellent-way\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cA Still More Excellent Way\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s epistle reading features I Corinthians 13:1-13<\/a>.\u00a0 Here St. Paul achieves a sublimity and spiritual illumination so excellent that still encourages and enlivens.\u00a0 This passage surely appears in some odd settings: I\u2019ve heard it read atop Maine\u2019s Mount Agamenticus<\/a> at a wedding that featured canine wedding attendants, and at Fulton, Missouri\u2019s \u201cWestminster Chapel\u201d (where Winston Churchill coined the phrase \u201cIron Curtain\u201d in 1946<\/a>) at a Star Wars-themed wedding.\u00a0 I Corinthians 13 makes these crazy-train stops because St. Paul\u2019s scriptural language on divine love has become the foundation for our secular, cultural language.\u00a0 Theologians rightly decry inculturation run amok, wherein cultural values infiltrate and overwhelm the Gospel\u2019s primacy.\u00a0 The cultural popularity of one chapter\u2014roughly two hundred fifty words translated into English\u2014from St. Paul points to another problem:\u00a0 the dilution of the Gospel beyond the point of recognition.<\/p>\n

These problems stem in part from St. Paul\u2019s own words.\u00a0 This particular segment<\/p>\n

Love is patient, love is kind.<\/em>
\n It is not jealous, it is not pompous,<\/em>
\n It is not inflated, it is not rude,<\/em>
\n it does not seek its own interests,<\/em>
\n it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,<\/em>
\n it does not rejoice over wrongdoing<\/em>
\n but rejoices with the truth.<\/em>
\n It bears all things, believes all things,<\/em>
\n hopes all things, endures all things.<\/em><\/p>\n

Love never fails.<\/em><\/p>\n

These are precisely the words that wedding plans\u2014Christian and secular alike\u2014adore.\u00a0 What could be nicer?\u00a0 For starters, it helps to remember that St. Paul describes here God\u2019s love (with clear implications for understanding the Trinity) from which our loves\u2014\"Screenshot<\/a>spiritual and physical\u2014take their form and vibrancy.\u00a0 Love without God is bound to fail; only with God\u2019 love\u2014which we experience as grace\u2014do we hope and endure all things. Supporting, enlightening, and justifying this great spiritual reality that is divine love stands the eschaton.\u00a0 There will come a day when we realize fully and completely the truths by which we live now only dimly and partially seen.<\/p>\n

At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror,<\/em>
\nbut then face to face.
\n<\/span>At present I know partially;
\n<\/span>then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.
\n<\/span>So faith, hope, love remain, these three;
\n<\/span>but the greatest of these is love.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Amen indeed\u2014love is the greatest.\u00a0 We will know this love fully some day, but meanwhile how do we live now?\u00a0 The eschaton brings to fulfillment the kingdom of God which Christ proclaimed.\u00a0 From last week\u2019s Gospel (Luke 4)<\/a>, Jesus reads Isaiah\u2019s proclamation of good tidings to captives, the poor, and the afflicted, then sits down announcing \u201cToday this has been fulfilled in your hearing.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, like St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, the Kingdom already exists here on earth.<\/p>\n

Constructing the path to this \u201calready, but not yet fully\u201d is St. Paul\u2019s \u201cstill more excellent way.\u201d\u00a0 God\u2019s love, which the Holy Spirit brings us, enlivens our lives and interactions with each other. Any kingdom, and certainly God\u2019s kingdom, necessarily rests on communitarian foundations. So, the more excellent way\u2014an ethic, and the eventual route to God\u2019s Kingdom\u2014necessarily go through and with the Church. In this we benefit from, as St. Paul said, \u201ca great cloud of witnesses\u201d (Hebrews 12:1).\u00a0\u00a0 Father Michael Sliney, LC<\/a>, cultivates a burgeoning YouTube and Google+ parish, each post declaring \u201cThy Kingdom Come!\u201d\u00a0 Anthony Esolen has written recently a delightful book Reclaiming Catholic Social Teaching<\/a>. Using an impressive grasp of Pope Leo XIII\u2019s encyclicals, Esolen reasserts the Church\u2019s social message for family, Church, and state.\u00a0 The relationship with God bonds the individual to each of these communities in specific ways.\u00a0 The key, of course, is to make sure one\u2019s loves are ordered properly.\u00a0 This happens only with God\u2019s love. Finally, today is the feast day of St. John Bosco<\/a>, who pursued the \u201cstill more excellent way\u201d with working-class boys in mid-nineteenth century Turin, Italy. It was not easy work, but St. John persevered.\u00a0 A dream at age nine had convinced him God had called him to the vocation.\u00a0 In the dream John fought a gang of boys, but then a man intervened, calling John to become their leader.\u00a0 When John protested, the man insisted humility and cheerfulness would win them over.\u00a0 St. John\u2019s dream, in other words, reaffirmed St. Paul\u2019s \u201cstill more excellent way.\u201d\u00a0 The providential intersection of St. Paul\u2019s epistle and the feast of Catholic youth ministry\u2019s great patron should illuminate our own relationships with God and, through God, with others.<\/p>\n

Guest blogger Jeffrey Marlett<\/strong> blogs at Spiritual Diabetes<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s epistle reading features I Corinthians 13:1-13.\u00a0 Here St. Paul achieves a sublimity and spiritual illumination so excellent that still encourages and enlivens.\u00a0 This passage surely appears in some odd settings: I\u2019ve heard it read atop Maine\u2019s Mount Agamenticus at … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,23,1],"tags":[165],"class_list":["post-1156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-spirituality","category-uncategorized","tag-love"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}