No Gift Higher Than Love

Hi! and happy holy and family day to all of us, GUYS.  For our first-thing-first this Sunday:

THE GOOD NEWS (31 January 2016)

"Be that as it may, set your hearts on the most precious gifts, and I will show you a much better way.

Now we have faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love." - 1 Corinthians 12:31, 13:13 

(Faith, hope, love.  Paul quite often joins these three "virtues", that is, the three movements in the Christian soul.  In no other place does he state this more clearly than here.  There is no authentic love without faith and hope.

The greatest of those is love.  Sometimes this sentence is used to misrepresent what is essential to Christian life.  For many say, "I do good to my neighbor, what else does GOD ask of me?  It would not be difficult to prove that such love is very limited, selfish and impure.  It is a "love" in which divine love lives in very cramped conditions and so is unable to transform our life.  We would need, first of all, great hope in a Christian sense that is a passion for eternal things and then the yielding of ourselves to the Spirit who would complete HIS work of love in us.  Love reaches its perfection when we are in GOD: I will know HIM as HE knows me.  As long as we do not see GOD, love is immature; that is the time when love must grow through faith and the knowledge of GOD's word; also through hope and perseverance as we follow JESUS poor, free and in the midst of trials.)