But the Greatest of These is Love, Part II
This is Part II of a four part blog. Please see my blog post of 08 20 07 to read the passage from I Corinthians 13 that I am commenting on and to get a context for what I am speaking about in this blog post.
As well, for this “new” religion to spread the way it did, despite all the strong persecution from the establishment, it had to be such a transformative experience that it would inspire people to risk “life and limb” to spread the “Word.”
So, early Christianity certainly was a religion that touched many people very deeply. The gatherings of early Christians were very “spirit-filled,” that is, charismatic and Pentecostal. People spoke in tongues, channeled, did healings, did prophecy, performed miracles, etc. It was quite a rich, emotional atmosphere that was created.
In the passage above St. Paul was writing to the Corinthians in order to help them to understand that all the phenomena that they were experiencing were good, but that they must not lose sight that the whole point of all this was the underlying Love that made all these miraculous things possible. To lose sight of that would be to lose sight of the whole message and mission of Jesus and it would also be losing sight of the whole purpose of the early Church that was emerging after Jesus’ Resurrection.
We all get so caught up in the phenomena of life and lose track of the essence of it all. In other words, we get caught up in the glitz and glitter of life and miss out on its real meaning. We get caught up in all kinds of surface external events and miss out on the internal aspect of things. We get caught up in “doing” all kinds of things, but miss out on just “being” true to our selves and “knowing” ourselves and what our real purpose in life is. We easily allow ourselves to be distracted.
This is Part II of a four part blog.