Monday, October 10, 2011

What Is Love?

Today’s Epistle reading for the Daily Office is well known and is often used at weddings. It is a beautiful description of what love really is:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor. 13: 1-13).


Love never ends and it can endure all things because God is love. Love is God’s gift to us; it is a gift of Himself in the person of Jesus Christ who gave his all for you and for me, and the expression of the eternal aspect of that love is made real in his Resurrection. The relationships that count are eternal.

Let us pray: Eternal Father, you gave to your incarnate Son the holy name of Jesus to be our salvation who by his death and resurrection showed us Your love o Father: Plant in every heart, we pray, the love of him who is the Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

CALENDAR REMINDERS & UPCOMING EVENTS

WOMEN’S BIBLE STUDY: Sundays at 4:00 p.m. in Sutton Hall. Please join Jillian Bain for this prayerful study of Scripture.

ECW ANNUAL RETREAT 14-15 OCTOBER 2011 at Camp Allen.

THE FISH FRY: Saturday, 5 November 2011, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. (proceeds for Church renovation/maintenance), and we are raffling a 32 inch flat screen TV (for the victims of the wildfires in Texas).

CLOTHING DRIVE FOR VICTIMS OF THE WILDFIRES: We will begin a clothing drive for the victims of the wildfires, especially the people of Bastrop and Calvary Episcopal. Please bring only CLEAN CLOTHES, SORT THEM BY SIZE, MALE/FEMALE, AND BOX THEM. Thank you in advance.

PLEASE REMEMBER EVERYONE ON OUR PRAYER LIST especially all parishes with search committees as they seek new rectors, for all of those suffering from the wildfires, and in thanksgiving for all that God has done for us.

“May the Holy Spirit be my personal guide always so that I will live only for Him. May I overflow in love so as to draw others to Christ and may His strength be perfected in my weakness.” —A prayer Cameron Townsend (1896-1982) learned from his father

Your servant in Christ,

Fr. Chester J. Makowski+
St. Augustine of Hippo Episcopal Church
Galveston, Texas 77550

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