THE SCHOOL OF LOVE
"BE zealous for the better gifts," says St. Paul in a well-known passage. "And I shew unto you yet a more excellent way." Then the apostle breaks out into that wonderful description of love, which has been worn threadbare by all writers and preachers; worn threadbare, and yet it is ever new, ever thrilling, ever inspiring.
"Love is patient, is kind. Love envieth not, dealeth not perversely; is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never falleth away....Follow after love" (I Cor. xiii.).
Love is a word we play with very easily. We use it for the most trifling emotions; we even use it with a sense of evil, so that we almost fear to have it on our lips at all, lest others take scandal at our language.
Nevertheless the word is the greatest and the deepest that human tongue has ever invented. It is almost too deep for definition. Poets have extolled it from the beginning of the world; philosophers have discussed and analysed it; men and women have lived for it and died for it by millions; upon it man builds up this existence, and God Himself has built eternity; it is the key to this life, the content of the next, the abiding link between both, the mortal's possession that can never die, the fire of life that leaps across the chasm made by death....
[continued tomorrow]
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From The School of Love and Other Essays
by The Most Reverend Alban Goodier, S.J.
Burns, Oates, & Washburn, Ltd. 1918
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