Tenth Sunday after Trinity AD 2024

St. Paul speaks in today's Epistle about various gifts of the Holy Spirit. At the end of the same twelfth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, from which today’s Epistle is taken, he says: “But covet earnestly the best gifts; and yet shew I unto you a more excellent way.” What is this “more excellent way” and what is the greatest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit? St. Paul tells us this in the next chapter of his Epistle to the Corinthians, that “the greatest of these is charity”.

The word “charity” comes from the Latin language and denotes an attitude towards someone who is inestimably dear to you. In Greek, the corresponding word is “agape”, which could be translated as “divine love”.

It was with this kind of divine love that Jesus looked upon Jerusalem as He approached the city. This love made Him weep and say in pity: “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes.”

Knowing both what He himself would have to experience and suffer in Jerusalem, as well as what awaits the city and its people in a few decades, Jesus didn’t turn away from them, but went into the city, right into its center, that is, into the temple, to be with His people and teach and exhort them. He did all this out of divine love, for this is what He came for: to lead lost sinners back to their loving Father.

This is also our vocation, the vocation of the Church of Christ. Whatever gifts of the Holy Spirit we have received, ultimately, they are all in the service of divine love, so that no one should perish, but as many as possible could be saved.