It is a great gift to be able to speak in different languages. To speak with the tongues of angels is even greater. But in order to show that none of this can be ascribed to merit and that every tongue is subject to the glory of God, Paul adds that a man without love is like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

Balaam’s ass spoke a human language in order to demonstrate the majesty of God,^[1] and children sang the praises of Christ in order to confound the Jews.^[2] In fact the Savior went further and declared that even stones could cry out if necessary.^[3]

In other words, says Paul, if I have no love I am not just useless but a positive nuisance.

The tongues of angels refer to the different languages spoken on earth since the destruction of the tower of Babel. As Moses says in Deuteronomy [32:8]: God has set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of angels. It is therefore the task of each angel to defend the distinction of nations. The tongues of men on the other hand are languages which we learn; they do not come to us naturally.

Paul chooses speaking in tongues as his example because the Corinthians thought that it was the greatest of the gifts. This was because it had been given to the apostles on the day of Pentecost, before any of the others. The tongues of angels are those which are perceived by the mind, not by the ear.

Balaam prophesied even though he was not a prophet,^[1] and Caiaphas also prophesied.^[2] So did Saul when, because of his disobedience, he was filled with an evil spirit.^[3] Judas accompanied the other disciples and understood all the mysteries and knowledge given to them, but as an enemy of love he betrayed the Savior.^[4] Both Tertullian and Novatian were men of no small learning, but because of their pride they lost the fellowship of love and falling into schism devised heresies, to their own damnation.

By naming prophecy and faith, Paul included every spiritual gift, since miracles are either in word or in deed.

By faith, Paul does not mean the common and universal faith of believers but the spiritual gift of faith. The two things have the same name, because when the Holy Spirit comes upon us it is our human faith which expands to make room for the divine gift.

Paul discounts even the most extreme sacrifices, if they are made without love.

Giving one’s body to be burned is not a license to commit suicide but a command not to resist suffering if the alternative is being forced to do wrong.

Love is the very head of religion, and someone who has no head is dead.

Since true charity loves all, if someone knows that he hates even one other person he should hasten to vomit up this bitter gall, in order to be ready to receive the sweetness of charity himself.

The one who loves fulfills the law. The one who fulfills the law is well respected. The one who is well respected receives a spiritual gift.

He next makes an outline of love’s matchless beauty, adorning its image with all aspects of virtue, as if with many colors brought together with precision.

The reason why love does not envy is because it is not puffed up. For where puffing up precedes, envy follows, because pride is the mother of envy.

A person living in solitary retirement will not readily discern his own defects, since he has no one to admonish or correct him with mildness and compassion. In fact, admonition from an enemy often produces in a prudent man the desire for amendment.

He adorns love not only for what it has but also for what it has not. Love both elicits virtue and expels vice, not permitting it to spring up at all.

So those who serve the Lord with gladness are they who love him above all else and show brotherly charity to each other.

What free servitude is this! What service, excelling all forms of dominance!

Cast off the sullenness of an angry man which you are evincing by your silence, and regain joy in your heart, peace toward your likeminded brothers and sisters, and zeal and solicitude for the preservation of the churches of the Lord.

Love hates what is unjust and rejoices in what is good and honorable.

Bearing all things, enduring all things for our love and hope regarding him, let us give thanks for all things, both favorable and unfavorable alike—I mean the pleasant and the painful—since reason often knows even these as arms of salvation.

A man with this charity fears nothing, for charity casts out fear. When fear is banished and cast out, charity endures all things, bears all things. One who bears all things through love cannot fear martyrdom.

For what is it to hear about oneself from you but to know oneself? Who, then, can know himself and say It is false, unless he himself lies? But because charity believes all things, certainly among those whom it makes one, in intimate union with each other, I, also, O Lord, do even confess to you in such a way that men may hear, though I cannot prove to them the things I confess are true. But those whose ears charity opens to me, they believe.

Out of long suffering love bears all things, whether they are burdensome or grievous, whether insults, lashes or even death.

The greater the love of God that the saints possess, the more they endure all things for him.

Love never fails, which means that it never falls into sin.

Love always remains firm and stable, unchanged and unchanging.

Tongues will cease when I express what I want to say with my mind.

What about our enemies and the heathen? Should we not hate them? No, we do not hate them but their teaching; not the person but the wicked conduct and the corrupt mind. It is no surprise to discover that prophecies and tongues will pass away, but what about knowledge? Paul goes on to explain why he includes that as well.

Use your knowledge as a sort of tool to build the edifice of charity, which remains forever, even when knowledge passes away. For knowledge which is used to promote love is useful, but in itself and separated from love it turns out to be not only useless but even harmful.

Our knowledge in this life remains imperfect, but it is reliable within its limits. Believers trust the witness of their senses, which are subservient to their intelligence. They may occasionally be deceived, but even so they are still better off than those who maintain that the senses can never be trusted.

Even though more knowledge is always being acquired by everyone, it will ever fall short in all things of its rightful completeness until the time when that which is perfect being comes, that which is in part will be done away.

Everything which is imperfect will be destroyed. But destruction occurs by making the imperfect perfect, not by removing it altogether.

What is implied from this is not that our knowledge will disappear altogether, but that its imperfections will be seen as very limited. We shall know everything we know now imperfectly, but so much more as well. For example, we know now that God is everywhere, but we do not know how this is possible. We know that he made the creation out of nothing, but we have no idea how. We know that Christ was born of a virgin, but we do not know how. And so on.

For now we know in part and understand in part. But then we shall be able to comprehend what is perfect, when not the shadow but the reality of the majesty and eternity of God shall begin to shine and to reveal itself unveiled before our eyes.

But, as this faith, which works by love, begins to penetrate the soul, it tends, through the vital power of goodness, to change into sight, so that the holy and perfect in heart catch glimpses of that ineffable beauty whose full vision is our highest happiness. . . . We begin in faith, we are perfected in sight.

This is a figure of speech for the way Paul lived under the law, when he persecuted the Word and was still senseless and childish, blaspheming God.

He is not referring to the growing stature that comes with age, nor to any definite period of time, nor even to any secret teaching reserved only for mature adults, when he claims that he left and put away all childishness. Rather he means to say that those who live by the law are childish in the sense that they are subject to fear, like children afraid of ghosts, while those who are obedient to the Word and are completely free are in his opinion mature.

When I was a child—that is, fresh from committing to memory the first elements of the divine Word—I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But now that I have become a man—that is, and am hastening to attain the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ—I have put away the things of a child.

In this life we are children, compared with what we shall become in the next life. For everything in this life is imperfect, including knowledge.

Here Paul points out just how great the difference is between what we know now and what we shall know in the future.

We know ourselves by reflection, as in a mirror. We contemplate, as far as we may, the creative cause on the basis of the divine element in us.

If the knowledge manifested to those worthy of it comes through a mirror and is an enigma in the present age and will be fully revealed only then, it is foolish to suppose that it will not be the same for the other virtues as well.

God does not have a face, of course. Paul uses this image to denote greater clarity and perspicuity. Someone sitting in the darkness at night will not run after the light of the sun as long as he cannot see it. But when the dawn comes and the sun’s brightness begins to shine on him, he will eventually follow after its light.

Face to face—this is how the holy angels, who are called our angels, already see. They are our angels in the sense that once we have been delivered from the power of darkness, have received the pledge of the spirit and have been translated to the kingdom of Christ, we shall have begun to belong to the angels.

The dim mirror is the law of Moses, which contains everything in types and shadows.

This means that the things which we now hear on the authority of the Scriptures we believe to be so. After the resurrection we shall see them with our eyes and know them in reality, when partial knowledge has ceased, for the knowledge which depends on hearing is part of the knowledge of an eyewitness and of experience.

No one has yet discovered or shall ever discover what God is in his nature and essence. As for a discovery some time in the future, let those who have a mind for it research and speculate. The discovery will take place, so my reason tells me, when this Godlike, divine thing, I mean our mind and reason, mingles with its kin, when the copy returns to the pattern it now longs after. This seems to me to be the meaning of the great dictum that we shall, in time to come, know even as we are known.

But when we begin to have a spiritual body as we are promised in the resurrection, let us see it even in the body, either by an intellectual vision or in some miraculous manner, since the grace of the spiritual body is indescribable. We shall then see it according to our capacity, without limitations of space, not larger in one part and smaller in another, since it is not a body, and it is wholly present everywhere.

There will always be love in the kingdom, it will abide forever in the unity of a harmonious brotherhood. Discord cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. One who has violated the love of Christ by faithless dissension cannot attain to the reward of Christ.

Love is the greatest because while faith is preached and hope pertains to the future life, love reigns. As 1 John [3:16] says: By this we know his love, that he laid down his life for us. Love is therefore the greatest of the three, because by it the human race has been renewed.

Faith and hope will cease when the things believed in and hoped for appear. But love then becomes even greater and more ardent.

Charity is the bond of brotherhood, the foundation of peace, the steadfastness and firmness of unity. It is greater than both hope and faith. It excels both good works and suffering of the faith. As an eternal virtue, it will abide with us forever in the kingdom of heaven.

Paul tells the Corinthians that love is the greatest of all because there was jealousy and strife among them, and the church was in danger of being divided.

Love is the greatest because it is the fulfilling of the law.

If faith is the substance of things hoped for, as Hebrews [11:1] tells us, it will be superfluous once these things have arrived. Similarly with hope. But love is greater than these, because when our troubles are over and our bodies have been changed in the resurrection, our minds will be steadied by it, so that they will no longer desire now one thing, now another.