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1 Corinthians 12:30-31
New Catholic Bible
1 Corinthians 12:30-31
New Catholic Bible
30 Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31 Set your hearts on the greater gifts.
Hymn to Love.[a] Now I will show you a more excellent way.
Read full chapterFootnotes
- 1 Corinthians 12:31 This may be termed a passage for the ages. The word “love” summarizes for Paul all the newness that Jesus brings to the world. Wherever love exists, something of the eternal and the divine enters into the life and communication of human beings. In comparison to love, every other value is relative and transitory; love is the ultimate meaning.
We should leave aside all the cloying sentiments with which the words “love” and “charity” are often burdened and read these few strophes to rediscover this supreme reality that is so simple, so demanding, and so sublime. What a reversal this emphasis on genuine love is for the Corinthians! All the gifts that they like permit pretense, vanity, and ostentation even in the religious sphere; love is the direct opposite of all that.
Where love is lacking, all the charisms lose their power and meaning, even those that are the most needed and the most fruitful for the mission of the Church. The gifts are all provisional. When humankind attains its completion in the love of God, it will be genuinely and definitively fulfilled. In the fullness of this communion and in the complete vision of the Lord, faith and hope themselves will be left behind. But love alone will remain; it is eternal, for God is love (1 Jn 4:8). Even on earth, love is the reality and the power by which Christians must live.
1 Corinthians 12:30-31
New International Version
1 Corinthians 12:30-31
New International Version
30 Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues[a]?(A) Do all interpret? 31 Now eagerly desire(B) the greater gifts.
Love Is Indispensable
And yet I will show you the most excellent way.
Footnotes
- 1 Corinthians 12:30 Or other languages
New International Version (NIV)
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