First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture) Quotes

“Most scholars, however, believe that “what is written” refers to Scripture. “What is written” is used thirty more times by Paul, always referring to a citation from Scripture. For Paul, Scripture is the Old Testament.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“Prophecy, which is addressed to human beings, has three purposes: building up, encouragement, and solace. “Building up” is a favorite expression of Paul’s, appearing six times in this chapter (vv. 3, 4, 5, 12, 17, and 26). It is the figurative meaning of a word that means literally construction of a building. Earlier”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“We would say today that it is prayer of the heart that goes directly to God, bypassing the mind. No one listens in the sense of understanding what is being said.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“Tongues is a prayer language of the individual to God. That appears as its primary function. In saying that the tongue-speaker utters mysteries in spirit, Paul is saying that the object of the prayer goes beyond rational speech.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“its broadest sense, prophecy is speech inspired by the Holy Spirit. Although other forms of speech may also be inspired by the Spirit, prophecy seems to differ from the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge described above (1 Cor 12:8) in that it is primarily exhortative, that is, “for . . . building up, encouragement, and solace” (14:3). It is different from teaching in that it is done under the spontaneous inspiration of the Spirit, while teaching presumes some kind of orderly preparation.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“But his high evaluation of love over the †charisms does not mean they are useless. On the contrary, they are the hands that charity uses to build the Church. That is why he immediately adds but strive eagerly for the spiritual gifts (the pneumatika). Since they are gifts freely given, that would mean praying for them and being open to receive them.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“Paul’s advice to pursue love does more than connect this chapter with the preceding. It indicates that agapē is not something that develops automatically; one must work at it or, better, pursue it.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“Agapē is God’s love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5), enabling us to love divinely. Yes, divinely—to love as God himself loves (Matt 5:43–48). Surprisingly, however, the infusion of that love, far from destroying the lesser forms—the human forms—of love, purifies and protects and empowers them to become all that God originally meant them to be. That is exactly what we see in Jesus, who is God loving with a human heart.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“By Paul’s own witness, however important they are, they are partial and temporary. So the temporal meaning makes more sense: “In this life, the three things that last are faith, hope, and love.” Obviously other things in this life, like the charisms and the sacraments, also last during this life, so the sense of lasting here must be comparative: faith, hope, and love are more important even than all the other gifts and virtues because they unite us directly with God. Thus they are traditionally called the theological virtues.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“Paul said, “If one loves God, one is known by him.” That does not mean that God doesn’t know us if we don’t love him. It means rather that our love of God is a sign of his special elective love for us, which the Bible calls his knowing us (Amos 3:2; †elect). Our loving God means that we have been given to participate in an experiential way in God’s knowledge and love of us. It is only in God that we find our true identity. But in this life even this is obscure. Then we will see God as he really is and ourselves as who we really are in him.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“The perfect, that is, the total, will banish the partial. The beatific vision will encompass all that the partial arrived at stumblingly, and offer infinitely more. What is revealed to us in this life is an icon of the realities that await us (Heb”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“All knowledge of God in this life is fragmentary—not false but fragmentary—as if one were looking at a map or a satellite image of a city but not living in it.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“It is important to distinguish between delightful love and sacrificial love. Both are from God. Although other forms of love know delight at times, and can even inspire sacrifice, agapē is a unique combination of the two. If it knows delight, this is more than an emotion or feeling, since it comes from the mind and the will, as it rejoices with the truth (1 Cor 13:6), which may or may not overflow to the emotions. But it is also sacrificial, as we see Jesus’ laying down his life out of love: He “has loved me and given himself up for me” (Gal 2:20).”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“Love never fails is sometimes translated, “Love never ends” (NRSV), “does not come to an end” (JB). Both meanings can be retained. Love never ends: unlike the †charisms, which will pass away, love will last forever, into eternity. There is no essential difference between agapē in this life and in the life to come; here it is in the obscurity of faith, there in the brilliance of vision, but it is the same love.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“When we love, there is no room for jealousy because others’ gifts become ours.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“Although not naively credulous, one who loves is inclined to believe the best about others, to trust their motives and actions. But as Spicq points out, even if the evil in another is evident and undeniable, agapē still does not despair of the future: it hopes all things. It trusts the basic goodness and potential of the person; it counts on the final triumph of the good. Thus Jesus saw in the woman caught in adultery the promise of a beautiful future, in a way that her accusers did not.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“Jesus, love forgives and desires nothing more than to embrace the offender”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“In short, since Jesus did not please himself (Rom 15:3), love forbids his disciples to do so.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“could hardly mean that one must never assert the interests of one’s own well-being, health, survival, and other such matters that would come from authentic love of self as God’s creation and God’s child. It is rather the conceited selfishness that is the opposite of divine love, which seeks not its own advantage but the good of others without return. This self-sacrificing love is the kind of ideal kingdom living that Jesus proposed. “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:34–”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“So with agapē. Love makes us one with the beloved, and the beloved’s gifts become ours. But jealousy and envy isolate”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“the Lord experience their preciousness.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“Love is kind.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“The biblical term goes beyond response to these types of annoyances. It means to be patient in suffering (Rom 12:12; Col 1:11). In addition to being slow to anger, it also includes the disposition not to return injury for injury (1 Thess 5:14–16) but to suffer injustice with goodwill (1 Cor 6:7). It was the kind of patience that Jesus showed in his passion. It does not mean merely hiding an inner anger under a pleasant exterior: it extends to the heart. Love is never bitter. It does not desire”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“Love is patient.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“Love here is personified, and commentators point out that these are traits of Jesus. To take on these traits is to become more like him.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“In either case, the idea is that Paul envisages the most heroic self-gift done for a motive other than love. T. S. Eliot, in his imaginative interpretation of the temptations of St. Thomas Becket in Murder in the Cathedral, presents the final tempter as offering Thomas the crown of martyrdom so that he may enjoy a human glory, a triumph of his own pride. To which Thomas answers, “The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.” A true martyr goes to his death because there is no other way to be faithful to God, not because it will be the ultimate triumph of his human pride. The ego can feed on anything—even martyrdom. Only love makes it real.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“What the speaker needs to know is that the God who gives light into the mysteries is also the God who gives love in the heart. Knowledge without love inflates (8:1). Thus, as Paul insists, one’s knowledge must be used with love.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“Prophecy Paul regards as the gift most to be desired (14:1), and it too is meant to foster love in the community and in the one who exercises it. But”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“There are several words for love in Greek. Eros means romantic or sexual love.[110] Philia means the love of friendship. Philadelphia is brotherly/sisterly love. Storgē is parental love. The word Paul uses for love here is none of these: it is agapē. In the New Testament this means a wholly benevolent, disinterested love. If the other kinds can be tainted with selfishness, this kind is loving just for the sake of loving, not seeking any reward or return of the love except in the measure it benefits the other. In the New Testament it is used primarily for God’s love for us, which, shown in Jesus’ self-gift on the cross, is “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom 5:5 RSV). This love, God’s own perfect love, arouses love for God in return (Rom 8:28; 1 Cor 2:9). This could be called the vertical dimension of agapē, descending from the Father and ascending back to him from those who love him in return. This Trinitarian trait of Christian agapē sets it apart from even the highest form of love understood in the Greco-Roman world.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):

“Not everyone has every spiritual gift, but everyone is called to live in love.”
― George T. Montague, First Corinthians (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture):