Click here to read the daily readings from the USCCB website.
When I was living in Milwaukee, I would consistently attend the young adult mass that Brew City Catholic hosted on Wednesday nights at my church. This was the reading at one of those masses and I distinctly remember a part of the homily when the priest said that there are 2 camps as relate to this classic wedding reading: there are the people that are definitely going to use 1 Corinthians 12 in their wedding, and there are the people that are definitely not going to use 1 Corinthians 12 in their wedding. I am in the latter camp.
For me, it’s hard to take this reading seriously because it’s become so cheesy. I hear the beginning of the passage and I automatically roll my eyes and begin to daydream. Which is terrible! There is so much good stuff in here about how we’re called to love, and in learning about love we learn about God.
I very often make the mistake of pursuing holiness by trying to do all the right things. “I’ll be holy when… I wake up at 5 am every day to do my holy hour… I can say no to eating food I don’t need… it’s easy to not gossip.” I make my faith about what I do, which is not what God invites us into! Patience, kindness, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things: these are the fruit of love. They are not love itself.
Jesus Christ is love itself. When we conform ourselves to Jesus Christ, then the fruit of our love will be patience kindness, bearing all things, etc. Sometimes conforming ourselves to Jesus will require us to change, to reject sin, to reject selfishness. But that will only be a fruit of the Love that we share. We cannot do anything without Jesus first doing good in us. So seek to love Jesus more and more today and every day. Become who you are.
-Amanda Benner, Director of Evangelization