“Covet earnestly the best gifts; and yet show I unto you a more excellent way. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”
-- 1 Cor . xii . 31 ; xiii . 1 .
“Then He took unto Him the twelve, and said unto them, go up to Jerusalem, and all things written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished…..And it came to pass, that as He was come nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the wayside, begging."
– ST. LUKE xviii. 31, 35.
CHARITY! Whenever a new thought is working in the minds of men, it invests itself with a new word, or with an old word to which it gives a fresh significance. This is especially true of Christianity. So the Greek word, which to the heathen simply denoted "the bringing up of the child," became weighted to Christian thought with the truth that God's bringing up involves the cross, and therefore signifies chastening. So the word, translated charity or love, is lifted up from all lower associations, and becomes love to God, and love to man for God's sake. In today's Gospel,† Charity is personified, in thought and action, in will and work; meditating the greatest act of self-sacrifice which time has ever known, yet arrested by the pauper at the wayside; loving God, and man for the sake of God.
…Continued….
* Παιδεία. +Quinquagesima Sunday.