Paul’s message is far from romantic love. Paul encourages his readers to meet, to know and then to make a sign of their personal lives on virtues not specifically mentioned: the virtues of stability and constancy, genuine treasures for the community and each person’s life.
The stability Paul encourages is formed by a single-minded devotion to God. Where this relationship with God is lacking, disruption usually results. More often than not, the absence of God in a person’s life results in emptiness or deception.
Here is a thought: how often do we hear that marriages or families are falling apart, that our nation is on a track most dislike and that so many men and women are overwhelmed by the realities confronting them? Here’s the question: could these experiences be the result of the absence of God in our lives, our homes, our society? I believe St. Paul would nod in the affirmative.
For the stability that true love, the virtue of love, demands to be real constancy. And what is constancy, you might ask? It is nothing more than a determined dedication and commitment to what is good for each other, for our families and for our nation. We were created by God, our families come to be through God’s creative love, and our nation and all nations were brought into being by God-created people.
What Paul is preaching is simple: with true commitment to a relationship with God, we bring about stability and constancy in what we do. In this we provide a solid basis for the love that brings genuine peace and happiness to our lives, our families and our nation.
