Sweet Charity

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three;
but the greatest of these is charity.
1 Corinthians 13:13

Today's epistle is one of the best known passages in sacred scripture. But in modern translations of St. Paul's "Hymn to Charity," such as the translation in your pew Bible, "charity" is replaced by "love." This change, it is argued, is required by the changed meaning that "charity" has acquired since the King James Version was produced.

In my English dictionary, the first meaning under "charity" is: "the giving of help, money, food, etc. to those in need." Only in 5th place do we find what Paul is talking about: "love of one's fellow men."

However, it must be said that the word "love" has also changed in meaning. The Vietnam era brought in the word "love-in" and the slogan "make love, not war," and we are all influenced by Dr. Freud's hypothesis that sex is at the root of everything.
So if we choose to replace "charity" with "love," we must remember that love too can mean quite different things. It can mean the effective, selfless promotion of the good of another, or it can mean the instinct for self-gratification.

The Greek word for the sexual instinct, eros, ever occurs in the New Testament. The word that Paul uses is agape, the same word which came to designate the communal meal in the early church taken in commemoration of the Last Supper.
But the sharp disjunction between eros and agape has its problems. We do not want to lose one of the essential characteristics of erotic love, which is passion. Passion is necessary for any effective action on behalf of another. The love shown by Mother Teresa or Archbishop Tutu was not erotic, but it was certainly passionate.

Passion is connected with and fostered by a particular notion of how to reach understanding which is typical of the Western psyche. Only through suffering, which is another word for passion, can we come to self-awareness. Only by risking our life, in suffering and even on the verge of death, can we discover the meaning of true life.

And so it is quite appropriate on this Quinquagesima Sunday, the last Sunday before Lent, that Paul's great hymn to charity is joined to the gospel reading in which Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem, declaring to the Twelve: "Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished" (Luke 18:31).

The worrisome thing about the modern understanding of love is not its association with sex but its dissociation from commitment and the suffering which commitment entails. "I'm out of here" is the typical modern reaction in a love relationship, when the going gets tough.

That is why we need to ponder Paul's stirring words:

Charity seeketh not her own,
but beareth all things,
believeth all things, hopeth all things
endureth all things.
1 Corinthians 13:5.7

March 2, 2003