If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
Do we consider Faith to be the most important thing in the world? If so, we are quite wrong.
If we do, at some point, believe that, then we might as well stop believing.
2. This Letter to the Corinthians is not the only document to state that Love is the summum bonum, the highest or supreme good. All the major works in Christianity agree on that point.
Peter says: ‘Above all, hold unfailing your love for one another, since love covers a multitude of sins.’
John goes still further: ‘God is Love.’
In another text of Paul’s, we read: ‘Love is the fulfilling of the Law.’
3. Then Christ said: ‘I will show you a simpler way. If you do one thing, you will do these hundred and ten things, without ever thinking about them. If you love, you will unconsciously fulfill the whole law.’
We can judge for ourselves if this advice works. Take any one of the commandments:
‘Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.’
That is Love.
‘Take not His name in vain.’
Would we dare to speak lightly of someone we love?
‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.’
Do we not wait longingly for the day when we will meet our beloved in order to devote ourselves to Love? It will be the same if we love God.
Love requires us to obey all of God’s laws.
4. Love, then, is ‘the fulfilling of the Law’. Love is the rule that contains all the other rules. Love is the commandment that justifies all the other commandments. Love is the secret of life. Paul learned this and, in the letter I read from just now, he gave us the best and most important description of the summum bonum – the highest good.
5. Paul compares Love with Prophecy. He compares it with Mysteries. He compares it with Faith. He compares it with Charity.
Why is Love greater than Faith? Because Faith is merely a path that leads us to the Greater Love.
Why is Love greater than Charity? Because Charity is merely one of the ways in which Love manifests itself. And the whole is always greater than its individual parts. Charity is also merely a path, one of the many paths that Love uses to bring us closer to our fellow man.
6. Paul then compares Love with sacrifice and martyrdom. And I say to those who hope one day to work for the good of humanity: If I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Nothing! You cannot give anything more important than the Love reflected in your own life. A man’s message of Faith lies in the way he lives his life and not in the words he says.
7. Take that same Love with you and the work you do will be fully justified. When you speak about God and the world of the spirit, there can be no more eloquent subject. There is no point in talking about miracles, witnesses of Faith, fine prayers. If you do all that but have not Love, all your efforts will be in vain. You may accomplish everything you set out to accomplish and be prepared to make any sacrifice, but if you give your body to be burned and have not Love, you will have achieved nothing for yourself or for God’s cause.
8. After comparing Love with all those things, Paul– in three short verses– gives an amazing analysis of that Greatest of Gifts. He tells us that Love is made up of many things.
Like light. We learn at school that if we pick up a prism and allow a ray of light to pass through it, that ray will divide up into seven colours. The colours of the rainbow.
Then Paul takes Love and allows it to pass through the prism of his intellect, dividing it up into its various elements.
He shows us the rainbow of Love, just as a prism reveals to us the rainbow colours of light.
And what are those elements? They are virtues we hear about every day and that we can practise at every moment in our lives.
It is these small things, these simple virtues, that make up the Supreme Gift of Love.
9. Love is made up of nine ingredients:
Patience: Love is patient…
Kindness: …and kind.
Generosity: Love does not envy…
Humility: …or boast; it is not arrogant...
Courtesy: …or rude.
Unselfishness: It does not insist on its own way.
Good temper: It is not irritable…
Guilelessness: or resentful.
Sincerity: It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
10. Patience. Kindness. Generosity. Humility. Courtesy. Unselfishness. Good temper. Guilelessness. Sincerity. All these things make up the Supreme Gift, and are there in the soul of whoever wishes to be in the world and close to God. All these gifts are to do with us, with our daily lives, with today and tomorrow, not with eternity.
We hear a lot about loving God.
But Christ talks to us about loving our fellow man.
We seek peace in Heaven.
Christ seeks peace on Earth.
11. Our human search for the answer to our main question -What should I do with my life? - is not some strange thing imposed on us from outside. It is to be found in all civilisations, because it was born along with mankind and is evidence of the breath of the Eternal Spirit in the world. The Supreme Gift reflects that breath. It is not just a Gift in itself, but the words and acts that make up the sum of every ordinary day.
12. Love is patience.
That is how Love normally behaves: it waits calmly, unhurriedly, knowing that at some point, it will show itself.
Love is ready to do its work at the right moment, but it waits calmly and meekly.
Love is patient. It can bear all things.
It believes all things.
It hopes for all things.
Because Love understands.
12. Kindness. Active love.
Have you ever noticed how much of Christ’s time in the world was spent doing kind deeds, how large a part of His short time on Earth was spent merely making other people happy.
If you view His life in that way, you will notice that although Christ had much to do, He never forgot to be kind to His fellow man.
There is only one thing greater than happiness, and that is holiness. That may not be within our grasp, but making other people happy is. God gave us that ability and it costs us almost nothing. When you think about it, you will see that it costs us absolutely nothing.
The world really needs that! And it’s so easy to be kind. The effect is immediate and you will be remembered for ever.
And the reward is abundant, for no debt is more honoured than the debt of Love. ‘Love never ends’.
13. Where Love is, so are we, and so is God. Anyone who takes joy in Love, takes joy in their existence as a human being, takes joy in God.
God is Love. Therefore LOVE!
Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, without fear that you might suffer: LOVE!
14. We often try to please, but what we need to do is to give pleasure. Give pleasure. Never miss an opportunity to give pleasure, because you will be the first to benefit from that– even if no one knows what you are doing. The world around you will become more contented and things will be easier for you. As Stephen Grellet wrote: ‘I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again’.
15. Generosity: ‘Love does not envy.’ Envy means love in competition with the Love of others.
Let others love. And try to love still more. Do your part, do your best.
Whenever you want to do a good deed, you will find other people doing the same thing, sometimes much better than you. Do not envy them.
Envy is always waiting to destroy everything that other people do, even if they do it better than we do. And the only way to escape envy is to focus all your energies on Love. Instead of envying, we should admire the large, rich, generous soul that does not envy.
16. And having learned all that, we must learn something else: humility. Place a seal on your lips and forget your patience, your kindness, your generosity. Once Love has entered your life and done its beautiful work, sit quietly and say nothing about it.
Love hides even from itself.
Love avoids even self-satisfaction.
Love does not boast; it is not arrogant.
17. The fifth ingredient is something that might seem strange and pointless in this rainbow of Love: courtesy. This is Love among people, Love in society. A lot of people say that courtesy is a superfluous feeling. Not true. Courtesy is Love in little things.
‘Love is not rude.’ You might be the shyest person in the world, the least well prepared for dealing with others, but if you have a reservoir of Love in your heart, you will always behave correctly.
18. Unselfishness. ‘Love does not insist on its own way’. Love does not even seek what is hers by right. One loves because Love is the Greatest Gift, not because it gives us something in return.
Id opus est. That is the task. Love is sufficient unto itself.
‘And do you seek great things for yourself?’ asks the prophet. ‘Seek them not.’ Why?Because there is no greatness in things. Things cannot be great. The only greatness is unselfish Love.
19. The lesson to be found in all spiritual teachings is that there is no happiness in having and getting, only in giving. I repeat: There is no happiness in having and getting, only in giving. True fulfillment, though, lies in giving and serving. ‘Whoever would be first among you,’ said Christ, ‘must be the slave of all.’ He that would be happy should place Love above all else in life. Nothing else matters.
20. The next ingredient is good temper. Love ‘is not provoked’.
We are inclined to view bad temper as a family failing, a personality trait, a matter of temperament, when we should really see it as a character defect.
What surprises me is that bad temper is often there in the lives of people who consider themselves to be virtuous, and can be a great blot on an otherwise noble, gentle nature. We know a lot of people who are almost perfect, but then, suddenly, they decide that they are right about something and lose their temper. The supposed compatibility of virtue and bad temper is one of the saddest problems afflicting humanity and society.
21. In the eyes of Him who is Love, a sin against Love is a hundred times worse. No vice, be it desire, avarice, lust or drunkenness, is worse than an evil temper.
22. There is no place in the Kingdom for the ill-tempered and intolerant. One such man would make Paradise unbearable for everyone else. Unless he be born again, and leave aside everything he considers untouchable and certain, he cannot, simply cannot, enter the Kingdom of Heaven, because in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, he must carry Paradise in his soul.
23. That is the great test of Love: knowing that, however hard we try, we almost never achieve the necessary peace for Love to flourish.
24. God is Love, a Love which, as it penetrates us, sweetens, purifies and transforms everything. It drives out all error, it renews, regenerates and rebuilds the inner man. Will-power alone cannot transform you. Love can.
25. Therefore, let Love in. Remember: this is a matter of life and death. There is no point my standing here and talking about Love if I am incapable of Love myself. ‘Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea’. That is to say, it is better not to live than not to love.
It is better not to live than not to love.
26. The people who influence and touch us most deeply are those who believe what we say. Suspicion makes people shrivel up. Faced by guilelessness, however, we grow and expand. We find courage and friendship beside those who believe in us. Those who understand us can transform us.
27. It is good to know that there are still people who think no evil, because they know the importance of the good they are doing. Those people grow in the eyes of men and of God. They are unafraid of envy or indifference because Love ‘thinketh no evil’, always looks on the bright side, always looks for the positive in every action. And again, he who loves wins, even though he sought no reward.
28. To be trusted is to be very close to Love. And we will only achieve that if we trust in other people. The little harm that others can do us because of our guilelessness is as nothing compared to our joy in the face of life. There will no longer be any need to wear heavy armour, bulky shields and dangerous weapons. Guilelessness will protect us.
29. We can only help someone if we trust him. If we respect others, we will recover our self-respect. If we believe that someone can improve and that person feels we consider him to be our equal, he will hear our words and believe he can be a better person.
30. Love ‘does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth’. I called this ingredient sincerity. He who loves will love Truth as much as he loves his fellow.man. He will rejoice in the Truth, but not in what he was taught to believe. He will seek the Truth with a humble, unbiased mind and will be contented with what he finds.
31. Real Love does not consist in exposing other people’s weaknesses, but in accepting everything and rejoicing to see that things are better than people said they were.
32. That should be our objective in the world: learning to love. Life offers us endless opportunities to learn how to love. Every man and every woman, every day of their lives, has ample opportunity to give themselves to Love. Life is not a holiday, but an education.
And the most important lesson we can learn is how to love. How to love better.
33. Spiritual growth applies the same laws used by body and soul. If you don’t exercise your arms, you will never develop your biceps. If you don’t exercise your soul, you will never develop strength of character or beauty of spiritual growth. Love is not a brief moment of enthusiasm.
Love is the rich, strong, generous expression of our being– character in its fullest sense. And to build that requires constant practice.
34. Try to see the world as a great education in Love and do not quarrel with your lot in life. Do not complain because of your unending cares and anxieties, your mean surroundings, the small and sordid souls you are obliged to live with. That is God’s way of making you practise.
And do not be alarmed by temptation or surprised because it is always there and never moves away, despite all your efforts and prayers. That is God’s way of putting your soul to work.
35. All these things are teaching you to be patient, humble, generous, unselfish, kind and courteous. Do not push away the Hand that is shaping your image, because that Hand is also showing you your path.
Be assured, you are growing more beautiful with each minute that passes – and although it may not seem like it, difficulties and temptations are God’s tools.
36. Remember Goethe’s words: ‘Talent develops itself in solitude; character in the stream of life.’
Talent develops itself in solitude, through prayer, faith, meditation and seeing the unseen. But character can only grow if we remain in the stream of life. Because it is in the world that we learn to love.
37. I have named a few of the elements of Love as a way of helping us understand God and our fellow man. However, these are only elements. Love can never be defined. Light is more than the sum of its ingredients– it is something that glows and shines in space. And Love is much more than the sum of all its ingredients– it is something living, pulsating, divine.
38. Love is an effect. And only when we know the cause will the effect be produced.
When we read the Revised Version of the First Epistle of John, we find these words:
‘We love because He first loved us.’
That is what is written: ‘we love’ not ‘we love Him’, as it appeared in the earlier King James version.
‘We love because He first loved us.’ Notice that word because. That is the cause I mentioned. Because He first loved us, the effect– the consequence– is that we love too.
We are all manifestations of Love. We love Him, we love ourselves, we love everyone. That is how it is. Our heart is slowly transformed. Consider the Love that is given to you and you will know how to love.
39. You cannot force yourself– or anyone else– to love. All you can do is look at Love, fall in love with it and copy it.
Love love. Remember the great sacrifice He made and, by loving Him, you will become like Him.
Love begets Love.
40. Remain close to Him who loved us and you will be magnetised by that Love. Anyone who seeks the cause will feel the effect.
41. Love melts any ill or evil in a man’s heart and transforms him into a new creature, patient, humble, generous, gentle, unselfish and sincere. There is no other way of loving, nor is there any mystery to it. We love others, we love ourselves, we love our enemies, because He first loved us.
42. ‘Love,’ Paul insists, ‘never ends.’ Then he gives us another of his marvellous lists. He speaks of matters that were important in his day, things that everyone thought would last, and he shows all of them to be fleeting, temporary, passing away.
43. Paul is implacable: ‘As for prophecies, they will pass away’. The Bible is full of prophecies, but once they were fulfilled, they lost their meaning. They disappeared as prophecies and remained only to feed the faith of devout men.
44. Then Paul speaks about languages: ‘As for tongues, they will cease’. As far as we know, thousands of years have passed since languages first appeared on the face of the Earth. They helped man to survive in a dangerous, hostile world. Where are those languages? They disappeared.
45. Then Paul goes still further and adds: ‘As for knowledge, it will pass away’. Where is the wisdom of the ancients? It has vanished completely. The newspaper that brings us the news in the morning is thrown away each night.
46. ‘For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully’.
Can you tell me anything that is going to last for ever? Paul did not bother to name many things. He did not mention money, fortune, fame; he picked out only the things important in his time, the things to which the best men of the day devoted themselves. And he brushed them peremptorily aside.
Paul had nothing against those things in themselves. He does not speak ill of them. He said only that they would not.last. They were important things, but they were not supreme gifts.
There were things beyond them.
47. That is a favourite argument of the New Testament. John does not say that the world is wrong; he says that ‘it passes away’.
There are many beautiful things in the world, important things that delight and absorb us, but they will not last.
Therefore, do not love the things of the world. Nothing that the world contains is worth the devotion and time of an immortal soul. The immortal soul should give itself to what is immortal.
And the only immortal things are: Faith, Hope and Love.
48. And the only immortal things are: Faith, Hope and Love. Some might say that two of those things also pass away: Faith, when we feel and experience the presence of God, and Hope, when our hopes are fulfilled. What is certain, though, is that Love will last.
49. God, the Eternal God, is Love. Therefore seek out Love, that eternal moment, the only thing that will remain when the human race has reached the end of its days. Love will always be the only coinage accepted in the Universe when all the other coinages of all the nations have become useless and valueless.
If you choose to give yourself to many things, give yourself first to Love, and everything else will follow. Give to each thing its proper value.
50. The Gospels speak to us of a new life, therefore do not offer your fellow man only peace, rest, joy and safety. Instead, tell him how Christ came into the world to give us all a life abundant in Love, and therefore abundant in salvation, a life long enough for us to devote ourselves to learning to Love. That is the only way that the words of the Gospel can make sense and touch body, soul and spirit, and give to each part a goal and an aim.
51. To love abundantly is to live abundantly. To love for ever is to live for ever. Eternal life is inextricably bound up with Love.
52. Why do we want to live for ever? Because we hope that tomorrow will bring us someone we can love. Because we want to live another day with the person we love beside us. Because we want to find someone who deserves our Love and who, in turn, will know how to love us as we deserve to be loved.
53. Eternal life means to know Love. God is Love. John says: ‘This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent’.
Whatever your belief or faith, first seek out Love. Everything else will follow. Love is eternal, because God is eternal.
54. Love is life. Love never ends and life will not end while there is Love.
That is what Paul is showing us, that, in all created things, Love is present as the Supreme Gift, because Love remains when all other things pass away.
55. No worse fate can befall a man than to live and die alone, unloving and unloved. To love is to be saved. Not to love or be loved is to be damned. And he who takes joy in love already takes joy in God, because God is Love.
56. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy.
Put those ingredients into your life. From then on, everything you do will be eternal. It’s worth spending a little time learning the art of Love. No man becomes a saint in his sleep; he must pray and meditate. In the same way, any improvement, in any direction, requires preparation and care.
57. Address yourselves to living a life that is a full and proper one. If you look back, you will see that the best and most important moments of your life were those in which the spirit of Love was present.
58. Those are the moments that justify my existence. Everything else is transitory. Any other good or virtue is mere illusion. Those small acts of Love that no one noticed, that no one knows about, justify my life. Because Love endures.
59. Matthew gives us a classic description of the Final Judgment: the Son of Man is seated upon a throne and, like a shepherd, is dividing the sheep from the goats.
At that moment, the most important question for a human being to ask will not be: ‘How did I live?’ but ‘How did I love?’
The final test of every search for salvation will be Love. What we did or believed or achieved will be of no account.
60. Not loving means saying that God never inspired our thoughts, our lives, and that we never came close enough to Him to be touched by His exuberant Love. It means: ‘I lived for myself, I thought for myself, for myself and none beside, just as if Jesus had never lived, as if He had never died’.
61. No other charge – apart from a lack of Love – will be laid upon us.
Be quite sure, the words we will hear on that day will come not from theology, not from the saints, not from the churches.
They will come from the hungry and from the poor.
They will come not from creeds and doctrines.
They will come from the naked and the homeless.
They will come not from Bibles and books of prayer.
They will come from the glasses of water that we gave or did not give.
62. Who is Christ?
He who fed the poor, clothed the naked and visited the sick.
Where is Christ?
‘Whoever receives a little child in my name receives me’.
And who is with Christ?
‘Whoever loves has been born of God’.
THE SUPREME GIFT
HENRY DRUMMOND
FREELY ADAPTED BY PAULO COELHO
No comments:
Post a Comment