Be ambitious for the higher gifts,
And I’m going to show you a way
that is better than any of them.
If I speak in the tongues of men and angels,
but have no love,
I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbol.
I may have the gift of prophecy,
and know every hidden truth;
I may have faith strong enough to move mountains;
but if I have no love,
I am nothing.
If I offer all my goods to the poor, piece by piece
and deliver my body to be burned,
I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind;
love is not jealous or boastful,
it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the truth.
Love forgives all things,
bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
Endures all things.
Love never ends;
as for prophecies, they will pass away;
as for knowledge, it will vanish.
For our knowledge and our prophecy alike are imperfect,
and the imperfect vanishes when wholeness comes.
When I was a child,
my speech, my outlook and my thoughts were all childish.
When I grew up, I had done with childish things.
Now we see only puzzling reflections in a mirror,
but then we shall see face to face.
My knowledge now is imperfect,
then it will be whole,
like God’s knowledge of me.
So faith, hope, love abide –
these three –
but the greatest of these
is love.
Saint Paul, Letter to the Corinthians
