A loving person believes and has hope

January 28, 2007 -- Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

By Bishop Robert Morneau

	Bishop Robert Morneau
	Questions for reflection: 1. What do you strive for on a daily basis? 2. Who are the most loving people you have met? 3. How are faith, hope, and love related?

What do you strive for? Professionals in all fields strive for excellence: to be the best golfer in the world a la Tiger Woods; to be the best pianist, the best teacher, the best parent, the best . . .! Striving for fulfillment is built into our nature and we are restless until our capacities are fully developed.

St. Paul is in accord with this deeply embedded tendency, for he writes: "Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts." Then he goes on to comment on three great graces from God: faith, hope, and love. And, of these three, the greatest of the great is love.

So how do we strive for love? Again, St. Paul becomes our teacher as he paints a portrait of the loving person, a portrait unmatched by any other artists. The loving person has these markings: patience, kindness, delights in the truth, bears and endures all things, and, even though faith and hope are not quite up to the measure of love, yet the loving person believes all things and hopes all things.

St. Paul also makes a list of things that make us unlike God who is Love. If you have or detect in others these qualities you are not in the presence of a loving person: jealousy, pomposity, egotism, rudeness, self-referring, hot-temperedness, brooder over injuries, a delighter in sin. St. Paul, obviously, was both a good theologian and a good psychologist. He understood the nature of God and human nature.

Another good theologian and psychologist is the Little Flower, St. Thèrése of Lisieux. She strove for the great spiritual gift of love but she knew her own limitation; she also knew what made love possible. She writes in her autobiography, The Story of a Soul: "You know very well that never would I be able to love my sisters as you love them, unless You, O my Jesus, loved them through me. It is because You want to give me this grace that You made Your new commandment. Oh! how I love this new commandment since it gives me the assurance that Your Will is to love in me all those You command me to love!"

This passage indicates quite clearly that St. Thèrése also possessed the gifts of faith and hope. She truly believed that Christ lived in her and that it was this divine Presence that made possible her ability to love. St. Thèrése had great hope that the new commandment to love as God loved was possible, again because of the presence of the Spirit within her. In the end, although love is the greatest of the theological virtues, where love is present, her cousins, faith and hope, are at the same table.

Isaiah the prophet possessed all three gifts: he believed that God would deliver him; he had hope the forces of evil would not prevail; he knew himself to be loved before he was born and thus was given a gift to be passed on.

In Luke's Gospel, we witness Jesus facing people who did not believe, did not hope, and did not love. His offer of these gifts was rejected. The Gospel is a wake-up call reminding us that the three great theological virtues, though available, can be refused. Thus, striving for and embracing God's graces is a constant invitation.

(Bp. Morneau is the auxiliary bishop of the Green Bay Diocese and pastor of Resurrection Parish in Allouez.)