...bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.
Saint Paul urged his Corinthian congregation to be founded on love. It is the foundation or anchor for faith and hope, and all the other virtues. If we think of the Cardinal Virtues in a Trinitarian way: Love is the Father; the Son is Faith; and Hope, the Spirit.
If one should need or expect an answer to the question, "Why?" Love is the reason.
God had no need to beget a Son and be known as Father; nor to spirate a Holy Spirit. His Reason is simply grace, or Love.
Anyone who would probe the mighty works of God (Sirach 18:4) should learn to be content with that answer. Don't make it more complicated with words like deserved, earned, or merited. They will learn that it is God alone who probes the human heart and understands its subtle workings, misconceived opinions, and infinite longing. (Jeremiah 17:10) Despite whatever we might think of our own worth or that of others, God loves.
Psalm 18 adds the same reason for our salvation. After a long list of the usual human complaints there is a marvelous display of pyrotechnics when God comes down through ominous thunderclouds on the back of a cherub. The psalmist announces with enormous relief, "He saved me because he loved me." Does anyone want more reason than that?
The Love of God comes to us and through us and impels us (2 Cor 5:14) to love one another. It is not possible to receive God's love without acting as a channel, a pipeline, to others who experience God's love through us. It is a catholic kind of love which cannot discriminate on the basis of gender, nationality, friend, family, or foe. Although my fallen human mind might prefer to love someone else, the Love of God has no time for such nonsense. Who are you to tell me whom you should love? As Saint Paul said, love "does not seek its own interests."
You might well ask, "Do you, Father Ken, live up to that standard?"
And I can only reply, "That's for God to judge. If you ask me I'll say, 'I think not." But that's only an opinion; and, by definition, ignorant."
And then I'll go back to praising God for as long as life permits.
