What is Love (Trinitarian letter)

 Kathrin Burleson, Betrayal

What is Love?

Fr. Tony’s Letter to the Trinitarians

July-August 2015

In the new Episcopal Church  resource, Call on me: A Prayer Book for Young People (Moorehouse: 2012), there is a prayer and meditation on love: 

And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you determine what is best. Philippians 1:9-10

What’s love, really?  I mean really?

My (parent/caretaker) says, “I love uou,”

         But doesn’t always show it.

(Name) said, “I love you,”

         but broke up with me.

Jesus says to love others, but

         We always seem to be at war.

Is that what love is?

What is love, really?

When someone asks how I am and means it.

When my pet (name) is happy to see me.

When God forgives me after I screw up.

Giving a hug to someone who needs it.

Listening to someone who is hurt or lonely.

Helping others when they need it.

That’s what love is. 

Thank you God for loving me.

So I can show what love is.  Really.

We often read 1 Corinthians 13, Paul’s hymn to love, at weddings or funerals.  But I think we often miss his point because of the rhetorical devices he uses, which are not tools common to our era.  Here is my translation of that chapter putting it into modern rhetoric:

What is love? When you love someone, you are patient and kind with that person. You are not jealous of those you love, and you don't try to show them up. You don't talk down to them or act rudely toward them. You don't try to have your own way at their expense, nor do you get annoyed or resentful at them. You don't take pleasure in any injustice done to them or by them, but rather you rejoice when truth prevails. When you love someone, you put up with whatever they do, you trust whatever they say, you hold every hope for them, and you are willing to endure anything for them. When you love, you never stop loving. Not so with prophecies, languages, or knowledge—these will all cease one day. For our knowledge and our prophecy are partial only. And when wholeness arrives, partial things will come to an end. When I was a child, I used to talk, think, and reason as a child does. When I became an adult, I put aside a child's ways of doing things. At present, we see things indistinctly, as if through a clouded mirror, but then it will be face to face. At present, I know things only in part, but then, I shall have a knowledge of others just as I also will have been fully known. But as matters are now, only these three things really last—faith, hope, and love. And of these, the greatest is love.

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+