Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Jan­u­ary 30, 2022

n this cold “Ordi­nary Time” of win­ter in the north­ern hemi­sphere it is a great bless­ing to hear Paul’s let­ters to the Corinthi­ans week after week – chal­leng­ing us to appre­hend faith as a prac­ti­cal call to be with and for Jesus.

• Prac­ti­cal – that is prac­ticed, enact­ed, some­thing that we are about … that we do.
• Call – an invi­ta­tion to life so deep and so total that we are drawn to matu­ri­ty, to wis­dom, to com­pas­sion by respond­ing generously.
• To be with – to com­pan­ion, to sup­port, to care for, to see the world his way and to act like him.
• And for – to give all that we have and are to belong to his way, his work, his Being.

In the first and third read­ings of this lec­tionary this week we are remind­ed of the ulti­mate cost of this kind of faith – the ulti­mate cost in this life but NOT the ulti­mate reward – which is eter­nal joy beyond our imagination.

But the read­ing of Paul’s let­ter to Corinth tells of us the ordi­nary cost in terms of a long def­i­n­i­tion of love.  Almost any­one who has been to a Church Wed­ding in a Chris­t­ian Church of near­ly any denom­i­na­tion has heard this def­i­n­i­tion often, so “famil­iar­i­ty can breed con­tempt” as the old say­ing goes.  It takes grace for the pas­sage to awak­en us to the four chal­lenges list­ed above.

To fol­low this prac­ti­cal call to be with and for Jesus we learn slow­ly but sure­ly how to love by doing it.  Year after year I pon­der these words seek­ing for yet a deep­er and clear­er way.  This year what leapt out at me was the phrase “rejoic­es with the truth.”

In a world rid­dled with false claims, dis­tor­tions of real sit­u­a­tions, self-serv­ing pro­pa­gan­da, per­jury, in short with lying, we hear that love rejoic­es with the truth.  Why is this?  Because Truth is Love and Love is Truth, and both are names of the God we worship.

A spir­i­tu­al direc­tor once told me that if any­one wants to tell you a truth about your­self, real­ize that it can­not be the truth if the per­son speak­ing does not love you.  To speak truth, to walk in truth, to hold to the truth in the face of lies, to com­pan­ion oth­ers only with truth – that is with gen­uine love – is a prac­ti­cal answer to the call to be with and for Jesus.

Paul also reminds us that love will nev­er fail, so truth with nev­er fail.  Lies are prac­tices of hatred and they will fail inevitably.  We must walk close­ly with Jesus to ful­ly under­stand that in this life.  To see that those who lie will also kill, aban­don, use the worst forms of vio­lence, do every­thing to cor­rupt the inno­cent or unknow­ing is to know that such behav­ior is final­ly and absolute­ly death.

But Love (and Truth) is life and nev­er ends.